October 29, 2026: The announcement by India's largest private refiner Reliance Industries Ltd that it is open to collaborating with U.S. companies across oil, gas and clean energy, including in Venezuela, is a welcome signal to Washington that all is not lost in its ongoing attempts to utilise the Asian subcontinent as a key economic, political and military counterpoint to China's dominance across the Asia-Pacific region. It also comes at a time when New Delhi has become an increasingly important support mechanism for Russia, both economically and geopolitically.

Back in U.S. President Donald Trump's first term in office, the move was on to roll out as many relationship normalisation deals between Arab states and Israel ('Abraham Accords') as possible. This strategy was to be the cornerstone of Trump's foreign policy in the Middle East, which would advance U.S. interests in the region whilst simultaneously damaging those of China and Russia, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. For this to work most effectively, Trump needed to hold out the carrot of another 'big bid' for oil and gas products in Asia to gradually replace China's dominant buyer status among the Middle Eastern energy producers, and India looked like a great bet.

Subsequent data released in the first quarter of 2021 by the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed that India would make up the biggest share of energy demand growth, at 25 percent, over the next two decades, as it overtook the European Union (EU) as the world's third-biggest energy consumer by 2030. Indeed, India's energy consumption was expected to nearly double as the nation's GDP expanded to an estimated USD8.6 trillion by 2040 under its national policy scenario. This was underpinned by a rate of GDP growth that added the equivalent of another Japan to the world economy by 2040, according to the IEA. At the centre of this demand growth remains Reliance Industries' Jamnagar supersite -- the world's largest single-location refining complex, boasting a capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day.

Dovetailing perfectly into this idea were two other factors. The first was that India had shown willingness back on 15 June 2020 to aggressively push back against China's increasingly aggressive expansion across Asia-Pacific, in line with its multi-generational strategy to usurp the U.S. as the world's leading superpower, based around its land and maritime 'Belt and Road Initiative' (BRI), as also fully detailed in my latest book on the new global oil market order. On that date, New Delhi's military had clashed with those of China in the disputed territory of the Galwan Valley in the Himalayas, reflecting a much greater change in the core relationship between the two countries than the relatively small number of casualties might have implied. 

The second factor was that the UAE -- strongly fancied by the U.S. to become the first main Middle Eastern Arab state to sign up for an Abraham Accord (which it did on 15 September 2020) -- already enjoyed an extraordinarily close relationship with India. Multiple major deals in the energy sector had already been done between the two countries, with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company's (ADNOC) chief executive officer, Sultan al-Jaber, stating that he looked forward to exploring partnerships with even more Indian companies across the energy giant's hydrocarbon value chain. He added that he wanted this to include expanding the commercial scale and scope of India's vitally important strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) partnership, in line with ADNOC being the only overseas company allowed at that stage to hold and store the country's SPR.

(Source: Oil Price)