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Rubio spends a few hours at Reliance's Jamnagar refinery as Washington courts India's refining muscle
The US Secretary of State toured the world's largest single-site refinery with the Ambani family on Wednesday. Washington wants more Venezuelan and American crude refined in India, and US diesel prices are a midterm worry. No trade-deal remarks were reported from the visit.
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent a few hours at Reliance Industries' complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat, on Wednesday before flying back to the United States. The trip had been billed as a "private visit" hosted by the Ambani family, and it put the energy argument of his India visit in the place where it is most concrete: a refinery that can process about 1.4 million barrels of crude a day.
Rubio, who travelled with his wife, Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio, and US Ambassador Sergio Gor, was welcomed by Mukesh Ambani, Reliance's chairman, and members of his family, including Anant Ambani. The delegation toured the refinery, which Reliance describes as the world's largest single-site oil refining complex, then the Vantara wildlife rescue and conservation centre, and the company's emerging clean-energy manufacturing hub. Reliance said they were briefed on energy gigafactories being commissioned in phases and on data centres under construction. Its statement thanked "the Secretary of State and the Ambassador for their esteemed visit".
Munir has made this journey before. He was the first foreign military leader to visit after the two-week ceasefire that Iran and the United States agreed on 8 April, and he put off a planned trip in May while the nuclear question stood in the way. He was back on a day-long visit in late August, with Naqvi, to talk about preventing escalation and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and on 1 September Iran's foreign ministry said he had brought neither a positive nor a negative message.
What Washington wants
The agenda was set a day earlier in Mumbai. Rubio told an Indian news network that the United States wants to "work together more closely" with Reliance on refining energy from the Western Hemisphere, and he called India a "refining superpower". Venezuelan crude was at the centre. "They have the capability to refine heavy crude," Rubio said, adding that Reliance has done so before and that as more Venezuelan oil comes online, "it's something they can do". Reliance is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude outside the United States, as of the end of September.
Rubio tied the visit to security as well as supply. Large-scale refining, he said, helps countries manage energy-security worries, and he linked those to wars involving Iran and Yemen and to threats to shipping lanes such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. "Energy is related to national security," he said.
There is also a home audience. US diesel has reportedly reached about $6.28 a gallon, a figure that matters politically less than two weeks before the 3 November midterm elections, and the administration is looking for more refined fuel from friendly countries.
The commercial links already run both ways. Reliance has proposed a refinery in Brownsville, Texas, developed by America First Refining, to process 168,000 barrels a day of US-produced light shale crude. It would be the first major new US refinery in nearly five decades, and Reliance has signed a long-term agreement to buy its refined products. President Donald Trump announced the project in March and put it at $300 billion.
Russian oil is the complication. Russian crude made up about a third of Jamnagar's feedstock between July and September, and Washington wants India to diversify. Gor said on X that US liquefied petroleum gas has risen from less than 10 per cent of India's LPG imports to 67 per cent over the past year, making the United States India's largest supplier.
Reliance used the visit to show its other business. The Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex is being built on a 5,000-acre site at an estimated cost of Rs 75,000 crore, and will make solar modules, battery storage, fuel cells, electrolysers and power electronics. Vantara spans about 3,000 acres. The two sides also discussed collaboration between Reliance and US companies, supply chains, investment for rising demand and reliable power for data centres.
The trade deal stayed in Mumbai
No trade-deal remarks were reported from Jamnagar. After his talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Tuesday, Rubio had said that only "a small number of items" remained to be settled, and Trump has said the two sides are close. No official US readout of the Jamnagar visit was available.
Analysts see something for each party. Jamnagar gives Washington a way to turn Western Hemisphere crude into fuel at scale. Reliance gets a wider crude supply and a place as both a US investor and a big buyer of American energy. For New Delhi the task is to deepen commercial ties while, in the words of one assessment, "retaining flexibility over its energy sourcing decisions", because what India buys will still depend on crude prices, freight costs and refinery needs as much as on pressure from abroad.
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