---
title: "Why Rubio Toured a Gujarat Refinery Instead of New Delhi"
description: "Jamnagar processes 1.4 million barrels a day of Russian, Venezuelan and everyone else’s crude — and Washington needs all three streams to move"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-20T12:37:06Z
modified: 2026-10-21T02:33:12Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/why-rubio-toured-a-gujarat-refinery-instead-of-new-delhi-25b4ff
language: en
tags: ["rubio", "india", "reliance", "oil", "refinery", "world", "business"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Why Rubio Toured a Gujarat Refinery Instead of New Delhi

*Jamnagar processes 1.4 million barrels a day of Russian, Venezuelan and everyone else’s crude — and Washington needs all three streams to move*

By Luis Goa · October 20, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/why-rubio-toured-a-gujarat-refinery-instead-of-new-delhi-25b4ff

## In brief

- Rubio tours Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery, the world’s largest single site at 1.4 million barrels a day
- Russian crude made up about a third of Jamnagar’s Q3 2026 intake, down from roughly half in 2025
- Jamnagar accounted for six of seven Russia-linked fuel cargoes reaching EU ports in September, CREA says
- Reliance expected to process 350,000-370,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude in October, per Kpler estimates
- Trump’s approval rating hit a term-low 31% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll two weeks before the US midterms

Jamnagar, on India’s Gujarat coast, processes 1.4 million barrels of crude oil a day — about 1.5 percent of the world’s refining capacity, according to its owner, Reliance Industries. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to tour the complex on Thursday, skipping New Delhi entirely on a trip that, as Al Jazeera reported, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor called “a little more business-focused” than Rubio’s earlier visit to the country this year. The reason to visit a refinery instead of a ministry: Jamnagar sits at the junction of three numbers the Trump administration is trying to move with one stop — Russian oil revenue, Venezuelan oil revenue and the US diesel price, two weeks before voters who buy diesel go to the polls.

The complex is two refineries bolted together. The original unit, commissioned in 1999, runs 660,000 barrels a day; a second, export-oriented unit built inside a special economic zone, commissioned in 2008, added 580,000 barrels a day. Add those and the total is 1.24 million barrels a day, not the 1.4 million Reliance now quotes; the remaining roughly 160,000 barrels a day comes from capacity expansions the company has not itemized publicly. What the plant is built for is heavy, high-sulfur crude that many refineries can’t run without expensive upgrades, turning it into diesel, petrol and jet fuel. Reliance says it has processed more than 216 crude grades there, calling itself “perhaps the only refinery to achieve this feat” — a claim no competitor disputes, mainly because no competitor publishes a comparable count. [Al Jazeera’s account of the visit](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/20/why-rubio-is-visiting-reliances-oil-refinery-in-india-the-worlds-largest) lays out why that flexibility now matters to Washington.

![Three dark pipes feed an industrial processing apparatus, with a yellow outlet pipe releasing a large golden droplet against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/4625a23391a3df44c3bf8732314f88518b4ad4e5.webp)

## The sanctions loophole, measured

The mechanism that interests Washington and Brussels is simple: crude’s origin disappears once it’s refined. The European Union has banned imports of fuel refined from Russian crude since January 2026, but the rule binds only refineries the EU can identify as Russian-crude processors, and does nothing once a cargo of Jamnagar diesel carries no feedstock label at all. Russian crude made up 32 percent of Jamnagar’s oil intake over the July-September quarter, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finland-based think tank, in its [September 2026 analysis of Russian fossil-fuel exports](https://energyandcleanair.org/september-2026-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/). Al Jazeera’s own reporting put the same quarter’s Russian share at roughly a third of Jamnagar’s throughput, corroborating CREA’s figure within rounding. That’s down from about 50 percent in 2025 and from 3 percent before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine — but a third of 1.4 million barrels a day is still roughly 450,000 barrels a day of Russian crude passing through one refinery, untouched by the EU ban once it comes out the other end as fuel.

**How Russian crude reaches Europe anyway** Feedstock in, labelled fuel out: the route CREA's data trace through Jamnagar

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Russian crude oil *(32% of Jamnagar's Q3 2026 intake)* | Jamnagar refinery *(Reliance Industries, 1.4m bpd)* |  |
| Venezuelan crude oil *(~350,000-370,000 bpd, Oct est.)* | Jamnagar refinery *(Reliance Industries, 1.4m bpd)* |  |
| Other crude suppliers | Jamnagar refinery *(Reliance Industries, 1.4m bpd)* |  |
| Jamnagar refinery *(Reliance Industries, 1.4m bpd)* | EU ports *(Russian-origin fuel officially banned since Jan 2026)* | 6 of 7 cargoes, Sept |
| Jamnagar refinery *(Reliance Industries, 1.4m bpd)* | US buyers *(€122m in Sept, CREA)* | largest US flow |
| Jamnagar refinery *(Reliance Industries, 1.4m bpd)* | UK *(licensed exemption to Jan 2027)* | jet fuel, Aug cargo |

![How Russian crude reaches Europe anyway. Feedstock in, labelled fuel out: the route CREA's data trace through Jamnagar](https://rews.cc/img/eeb29c33fb6be83f12f255c5bef6d2f9a253afb7.webp)

Based on [Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)](https://energyandcleanair.org/september-2026-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/)

CREA’s September tally: refineries in India, Türkiye and Brunei that process Russian crude shipped products worth €1bn to countries sanctioning Russia that month, 43 percent more than in August; CREA estimates €295m of that €1bn originated in Russian crude, while cautioning the estimate does not establish that any single cargo violated sanctions. Jamnagar alone accounted for six of the seven cargoes that docked at EU ports in September, and for the group’s largest flow to the United States, which CREA values at €122m. Al Jazeera, citing the same CREA data, put Jamnagar’s September exports to the US at $143m — a figure that doesn’t convert cleanly to CREA’s euro number at any plausible October exchange rate, a gap the two organizations haven’t reconciled publicly. The United Kingdom has its own carve-out: a 64,000-tonne cargo of Jamnagar jet fuel unloaded at the Isle of Grain terminal in August under a licence that runs until January 2027.

Diesel is the product Washington is most anxious about. A Reuters analysis of trade data, cited by Al Jazeera, found Jamnagar exported 21.66 million tonnes of refined products in the first half of 2025, of which diesel was the largest share at 9.81 million tonnes, petrol 6.14 million tonnes and jet fuel 2.06 million tonnes. Europe took 28 percent of the total, with buyers including BP, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Vitol and Trafigura — oil majors and trading houses that would otherwise be barred from touching Russian-refined diesel directly.

## Venezuela fills the gap

> We will talk with Reliance about refining more Venezuelan crude.

That was Rubio’s stated agenda at Jamnagar, and the substitution is already under way. India imported 257,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude in September, of which 76 percent — about 195,000 barrels a day — went to Reliance, according to Kpler data [reported by CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/08/india-billionaire-trump-ambani-venezuela-oil.html). For October, Kpler’s schedule-based projection puts India’s total Venezuelan intake at 465,000 barrels a day, which would be the highest since December 2019 if every scheduled cargo discharges on time — but Kpler’s own senior manager, Sumit Ritolia, told [BusinessToday](https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/economy/story/indias-venezuelan-oil-imports-set-to-hit-seven-year-high-as-russian-crude-gets-costlier-report-560158-2026-10-07) he expects the real October figure closer to 350,000 barrels a day once vessel delays are counted, a reminder that a shipping schedule is not a customs manifest. That revised number is close enough to Al Jazeera’s separate Reliance-specific estimate — 350,000 to 370,000 barrels a day — to suggest Jamnagar alone could absorb nearly all of it.

![A large hand holds a tanker with Venezuelan flag colors on its funnel as it sails toward a map of India against a blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/7ac2b4c3cf69decafb68f60293ad0cdd90174e2b.webp)

Venezuela’s crude now flows under American control: the US took over the country’s oil exports after what Al Jazeera described as the abduction of then-President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, and Washington effectively decides who gets the barrels. Routing them to Jamnagar lets the Trump administration pull India off Russian crude without cutting the diesel Reliance ships back across the Atlantic. The pressure behind the offer has a tariff attached: Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods in August 2025 over Russian oil purchases, which helped push Jamnagar’s Russian share down toward the 32-33 percent range by the third quarter of 2026. A newer law passed last month authorized a 100 percent tariff on the same grounds; Trump has since suspended it — an on-again, off-again sanctions regime that leaves Reliance with every incentive to keep buying discounted Russian crude while it still can.

## Why Washington is in a hurry

The urgency has a domestic number behind it. Trump’s approval rating fell to 31 percent in a [Reuters/Ipsos poll released October 19](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2026-10-19/exclusive-trump-approval-falls-to-record-low-of-31-as-midterms-near-reuters-ipsos-poll-finds), a record low in either of his terms, down one point from two weeks earlier, with 66 percent disapproving overall and 68 percent disapproving specifically of his handling of the economy. A separate Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos poll out the same day put approval at 33 percent, with seven in ten respondents calling petrol or diesel prices unaffordable. The decline tracks diesel prices that have risen since the US and Israel went to war with Iran in February. The administration has reportedly also pressed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to [stop striking the Russian refineries](https://rews.cc/a/zelenskyy-says-ukraine-will-answer-russia-s-new-doctrine-at--c7b8bc) that have been rattling fuel markets — even as its own [Russia-brokered diesel arrangement](https://rews.cc/a/trump-calls-for-new-ukrainian-president-days-after-a-1-8m-to-2a34b7) involves volumes too small to move the price that triggered it in the first place.

![A black fuel nozzle pours a large yellow drop into the slot of a cream ballot box against a blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/aca1fb6217ff9b3b4760d2802bc987e54a9263d2.webp)

Reliance’s reward for cooperating runs through two US construction sites. In Brownsville, Texas, Ambani’s company has signed a 20-year offtake agreement backing America First Refining’s planned $3bn-to-$4bn refinery — the first US refinery built from scratch in about 50 years — expected to process roughly 60 million barrels of US crude a year, about 164,000 barrels a day, from around 2029. Separately, Essar Group, an Indian conglomerate with its own history of Russian oil dealings, is building a steel plant in Iowa through its subsidiary Mesabi Metallics: Trump put the figure at $18bn in announcing the Jamnagar-adjacent push, a jump from the [$15bn rews reported](https://rews.cc/a/trump-unveils-15-billion-iowa-steel-plant-built-by-essar-gro-dffe1e) when the project was first unveiled in September, with no public explanation for the difference.

None of this cooperation stopped Elon Musk, Trump’s most prominent business ally, from attacking Ambani days before Rubio’s trip. Musk’s Starlink has spent years failing to secure an operating licence in India; in a series of posts on X, he accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of protecting Ambani’s telecom arm, Jio, addressing Ambani directly as “Prime Minister Ambani” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete,” while accusing unnamed “oligarchs” of a “monopolistic chokehold” on Indian telecoms.

> Reliance has never feared competition... \[and has\] grown in an India that welcomes investment and innovation, homegrown or international.

Rubio’s tour settles none of the numbers it was meant to address. Jamnagar’s Russian crude intake is down from half to a third, not to zero; its Venezuelan intake is rising by an amount two Kpler estimates, a week apart, still disagree on by over 100,000 barrels a day; and the diesel price that set the itinerary responds to global refining margins, not to one company’s feedstock mix. CREA’s October report is due in November. The US midterms land November 3. Whichever arrives first will say more about whether swapping Caracas crude for Moscow crude at one refinery in Gujarat moves a price at a pump in Iowa.

## See also

- [CREA's Russian Fossil Fuel Export Tracker](https://energyandcleanair.org/financing-putins-war/) — energyandcleanair.org · Live running total of Russian fossil-fuel export revenue and sanctions compliance
- [Secretary Rubio's Travel to Samarkand, Mumbai, and Jamnagar](https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/10/secretary-rubios-travel-to-samarkand-mumbai-and-jamnagar) — state.gov · State Department's own itinerary and stated purpose for the trip
- [CNBC's advance coverage of the Rubio-Jamnagar itinerary](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/16/marco-rubio-reliance-jamnagar-refinery.html) — cnbc.com · Details on the Ambani family reception planned around the refinery visit