United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is to visit India in the coming week, but he will not set foot in the capital, New Delhi. Instead, on Monday, Rubio will hold talks with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, and then visit an oil refinery in Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, according to a statement from the US Department of State. His itinerary sparked a political storm after the US ambassador to India said Washington expected Jaishankar to travel to meet Rubio, prompting opposition leaders to accuse the government of allowing India’s top diplomat to be “summoned” on home soil.
The spat comes as relations between the two countries are strained over trade, tariffs and India’s purchases of Russian oil. So why is Rubio avoiding New Delhi, and why has it caused such upset? Here’s what you need to know: He plans to discuss trade, energy and investment.
Rubio is arriving on Sunday from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he has been meeting with five Central Asian states at the C5+1 summit. In India, he is due to meet senior officials to discuss the US-India strategic partnership and energy cooperation and hold talks with business leaders, the State Department said. Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal appeared to confirm the agenda, stating on Friday that the Mumbai talks would cover energy, trade and investment, defence, and critical and emerging technologies.
In Jamnagar, Rubio is to visit the world’s largest single-site refinery, operated by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, and attend a reception hosted by the Ambani family, according to The Hindu newspaper. Rubio was in the Indian capital in May for a meeting of foreign ministers of countries in the Quad, a group consisting of the US, India, Japan and Australia. The State Department has framed his upcoming trip around energy and investment, and the second stop on Rubio’s India visit, Jamnagar, is one of the world’s most important energy hubs.
The visit also comes as fuel prices bite in the US before next month’s midterm elections. Reliance, an energy, retail and telecommunications conglomerate, also sits at the centre of Washington’s wider oil diplomacy. Business Standard, an Indian financial daily, said the Jamnagar stop was significant because Reliance is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude oil besides the US at a time when Washington has been urging India to buy more.
Since US forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and took essential control of the country’s oil industry, the US government has marketed Venezuelan oil to buyers abroad. Reliance is also investing in a new refinery in Texas, the first to be built in the US in 50 years, which Trump hailed as a $300bn deal when he announced it in March, Business Standard reported. Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Thursday, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said Rubio would meet Indian government officials in Mumbai, and Washington “expected” Jaishankar and others from New Delhi to travel there to see him.
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