Oversupply might have helped push the iron ore price down to near decade lows but Australian miners can breath easy on former Rio Tinto boss Tom Albanese's call that former industry heavyweight India is unlikely to emerge as a major exporter any time soon.
Iron ore fell to $US44.10 on Monday night, within 10&cent; of the 10-year low of $US44.10 it hit in   July. 
India is one of the great unknowns in iron ore. What is clear is that steel demand in India, while maybe not holding the same trajectory as China, is on the rise, Delhi-based Mr Albanese said.
But India's iron ore industry is likely to be held back by conflicts with farmers, protectionism and scale problems, even as demand for its product rises, he said.
The iron ore industry in India is "complicated" by huge population and "interaction with communities, existing towns and agriculture, which would more resemble the interaction between coal miners in the Hunter Valley and the farmers, than it would the Pilbara", he said.
Mr Albanese last year took the helm of London-listed resources firm Vedanta, which has most of its assets in India.
India has enough reserves to be self-sufficient, and was a major exporter up until four years ago until a court ban ground the industry to a halt. Its exports peaked at about 120 million tonnes in 2009.
The ban has been lifted, with strict conditions, but India is battling protectionism and a reluctance to invest capital amid uncertainty.
Vedanta shipped its first cargo of iron ore from the coastal state of Goa two months ago, a year after a 2012 Supreme Court ban on mining was lifted. But mining in the state has an annual cap of 20 million tonnes.
Mr Albanese said new iron ore mines or expansions will be hindered by small lease sizes, existing communities and the difficulties in creating dedicated haul roads or infrastructure lines to the coast.

Bullish on India's iron ore demand
BHP has said it does not expect iron ore exports to India to exceed 10 million tonnes a year before the end of the decade. However, the miner is far more bullish on growth in India's metallurgical coal demand for imports, given the country does not have domestic reserves.
Rio said in   September that it expects the demand for steel outside of China to increase by 65 per cent by 2030, from 920 million tonnes to just over 1.5 billion tonnes of crude steel.
By 2030, India will be the second biggest consumer of steel, behind China, Rio said. In 2014, India's net iron ore imports were 8 million tonnes.
Mr Albanese says India's iron ore industry was also held back by protectionism, with Indian steelmakers arguing that iron ore resources are scarce and should be preserved for local markets.
"It is much like the argument in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s that Australian iron ore was constrained and should be preserved for Australian steel-makers."
"Our argument is well rehearsed from Australia back in the 60s and 70s, that there is plenty of geological opportunity, tonnes of mineral resource but effectively what is lacking is capital, and exports are needed to generate capital to do the exploration and increase the production."
He says the "geology and opportunity in India are not that different from some of the major iron ore regions of the world, including the Pilbara and West Africa and Brazil".
"There are a number of non-geological constraints that will be perennial challenges for the Indian iron ore sector. They are not insurmountable but they will take quite a bit of time and effort to solve."
Former Anglo American chief Cynthia Carroll was made chair of a subsidiary of Vedanta in   September, sparking some speculation Mr Albanese would be forced out. But he told Fairfax Media his job is safe.

Person of stature
"I worked with Cynthia for years, I welcome her in her advisory role in Vedanta. A person of her stature coming in obviously raises a certain level of speculation but I haven't been playing golf, I'm not playing golf now and I don't intend to start."
Taking the role at Vedanta has forced Mr Albanese to do "a quick study" of the political and social dynamics of India.
Vedanta, whose major shareholder is Indian billionaire Anil Angarwal, has most of its assets in India and is ramping up to tap the industrialisation of India. It has the capacity to mine 15 million tonnes a year.
Production in Goa is capped at 20 million tonnes a year - with Vedanta's share 5.5 million tonne. A court-appointed export committee will review "the cumulative environmental and social environmental impacts" of the resumption of mining in the state and recommend whether the cap can be lifted.
Over the next few months the Indian firm will ship ore stockpiled on its property up until court-ordered closure three years ago. That material had been given over to the state of Goa, so Vedanta had to buy it back at auction. After it has cleared out its stockpiles, Vedanta will resume mining.
India's paring of its export duty from 30 per cent to 10 per cent in   June this year on lower-grade exports of the commodity, has made restarting production profitable for some miners in the state of Goa, even around current prices. Vedanta is lobbying to have that 10 per cent duty cut further.
Vedanta's product is low grade - 56 per cent compared to benchmark quality of 62 per cent - and has no market in India but a "ready market in China", which was buying the product for almost 10 years before the court ban.