New Delhi, India — United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has arrived in India for a two-day visit, during which he is set to tour the Jamnagar refinery complex in Gujarat, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, a major player in global oil markets. Reliance’s crude refinery in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state is the world’s largest single-site refinery. In many ways, Reliance Industries’ businesses sit at the crossroads of the ongoing global energy crisis.
The conglomerate is central to Washington’s efforts to punish Russian energy buyers, while also trying to contain oil prices amid the war on Iran, on top of rising diesel costs in the US, where a crucial midterm election looms. Reliance has also only recently committed to a major investment in the US, which President Donald Trump’s administration has cited as an example of its successes in luring global capital. Rubio is skipping the capital, New Delhi, at a time when the US-India bilateral relationship has been rocky, strained by a string of friction points — and an elusive trade deal.
So why is the top US diplomat visiting the world’s largest single-site oil refinery? After meetings in Mumbai, India’s financial hub in the western state of Maharashtra, Rubio will fly to Jamnagar in neighbouring Gujarat, near the Gulf of Kutch. Jamnagar opens into the Arabian Sea and is home to Reliance Industries’ refining complex, a major hub for crude processing and fuel exports, which processes 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd).
Rubio had visited India earlier this year too, but this trip “is a little more business-focused”, the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, told reporters last week. A readout from Rubio’s office noted that he would “meet with business leaders to promote opportunities for commercial investment and economic cooperation”. The world’s largest single-site oil-refining complex has a combined crude-processing capacity of 1.4 million bpd.
That is nearly 1.5 percent of global refining capacity, according to the company. The complex comprises two refineries: the original facility, commissioned in 1999 with a capacity of 660,000bpd, and a second, export-oriented refinery commissioned in 2008, adding 580,000bpd, which operates in a special economic zone. Jamnagar imports crude from international suppliers and exports refined products to global markets.
The refinery can process heavy, sulphur-rich crude that many facilities cannot handle efficiently, converting oil into higher-value products. Reliance said last month that the complex has processed more than 216 crude grades, claiming to be “perhaps the only refinery to achieve this feat”. The Jamnagar refinery’s capacity is also driving a sharp revival in imports of Venezuelan crude — taken over by the US earlier this year after abducting then-President Nicolas Maduro — as Washington seeks to reshape global oil trade.
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