THE massive Reliance refinery in Jamnagar abutting the Arabian Sea from its perch in Gujarat was inaugurated in December 1999. There may be absolutely no connection between the refinery’s birthday and India’s nuclear tests of May 1998. But it’s difficult also to ignore the high stakes involved in its presence facing Pakistan, which too became a nuclear power that year.
History shows a pattern of power play associated with such critical and strategic assets. It was on the eve of World War I that Churchill decided that the Royal Navy should switch to oil and away from Welsh coal to make the fleet faster and more efficient. But with no oil of its own, Britain turned to the Abadan refinery, which would eventually become the world’s largest such facility, except that it was needlessly close to the border with Iraq. The refinery was at the heart of the 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh when the elected prime minister nationalised the oil industry. It was the first scalp for Saddam Hussein in the long war he launched against Iran in 1980.
The Jamnagar refinery is said to be the world’s largest facility to process the most difficult of crude oils, including hugely discounted volumes imported from cash-strapped Venezuela. Given its proximity to Pakistan, the facility has figured in comments by analysts and voluble generals alike as a potential target, a veritable sitting duck.
The Ambani family on its part has played an active role in seeking to improve ties with Pakistan. They reportedly played a role in pleading through a former US president close to the family in pressing Gen Pervez Musharraf to allow Nawaz Sharif to be able to leave Pakistan to live in exile. The refinery has also featured as a potential bridge between the implacable rivals, at one point offering to transport refined products to Pakistan through the Punjab border.
Given the fact that India has only suspended the war it launched against Pakistan under the sobriquet of Operation Sindoor and not brought it to a closure, the tense ties are expected to continue to keep a range of targets in the crosshairs of both sides. In the prevailing circumstances of a global economic meltdown mocking the poor and the rich alike, it’s probably just a question of a nudge that the proverbial ice is broken between the two, and last week may have offered a sliver of such a hope.
The day US Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to visit the Reliance oil refinery in Jamnagar, President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives was landing in Islamabad where he would give an unusual call to revive the frozen South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc). Muizzu’s call had a strange ring to it given that he was elected to lead his archipelago nation in 2023 on the openly anti-India slogan of “India out”.
The US wants to dry up Moscow’s wartime oil revenues by pushing India toward alternative heavy crude markets.
Seen as close to Beijing and pointedly hostile to New Delhi at the time, Muizzu preferred a mellow approach in Pakistan when Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif broached the two issues he routinely raises: Kashmir and Indus water sharing with India.
Leading the first Maldivian state visit to Islamabad in 11 years, Muizzu kept his sights on sweeping maritime security and defence pacts. For both Pakistan and the Maldives, a stronger bilateral relationship is seen as serving as a necessary strategic counterweight to balance India’s regional dominance.
Rubio’s visit to Jamnagar was not only aimed at sending more stolen oil from Venezuela for refining with a view to easing the enormous pressure put by the reckless Israel-US war on Iran on global fuel markets. Rubio’s primary objective apparently was to convince Reliance to buy more Venezuelan crude while aggressively cutting its intake of Russian oil.
Following Western sanctions on Russia, India became Russia’s top oil buyer. The US wants to dry up Moscow’s wartime oil revenues by pushing India toward alternative heavy crude markets. Gleaning from Rubio’s description, the US sees Jamnagar as the only facility globally with the sheer muscle to offset Russian volumes.
Before the visit ended, however, unflattering news came trickling in from Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian-ruled province China claims as South Tibet. The paramilitary patrol keeping vigil for India had had recent face-offs with Chinese counterparts at several parts of the border where they had held their ground valiantly. Or so claimed the paramilitary chief Shatrujeet Kapur. His comments were said to have been taken down and the government denied anything at all was really amiss.
Only a couple of days or so before the reported transgressions around Arunachal Pradesh and their denial by New Delhi, the two countries had gone through a notably high-decibel exchange over the naming of geographical features in Ladakh. The Global Times, considered close to China’s ruling Communist Party, wrote a long editorial reminding India of the need to avoid disturbing the agreement on peace and tranquillity along their border.
A bird’s-eye view of the South Asia chessboard, therefore, reveals a fraught cross-section of forces at play. Pakistan appears agreeable in its ties with the three big powers — the US, China and Russia. Whereas India has struggled to keep the US in good humour, which makes it even more of an ordeal to avoid annoying Russia, a traditional ally in countless ways. With China, the relations require a greater quotient of tender care but with scant quantities in sight.
Add to the mix the Indian youth mobilisation that’s rocked the over 12-year-old government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Has Rubio created more trouble for Modi, including by not even meeting him during the visit, or has he by visiting Jamnagar set the grounds for a diplomatic entente with neighbours? Which would leave Modi elbowroom to address the domestic crisis with any degree of composure or hope to endure the pickle he is in.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2026