Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, visited India this week and did not go to New Delhi. He flew in from Samarkand, met business leaders in Mumbai on Tuesday and then flew to Jamnagar in Gujarat on Wednesday, October 21, to tour Reliance Industries' refinery complex, the largest single-location refinery on the planet. He met Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance, joined by Ambani's son Anant and US Ambassador Sergio Gor. He called India a 'refining superpower.' He said: 'We will talk with Reliance about refining more Venezuelan crude.' No agreements were signed. No commitments were announced. Reliance described the discussion as an opportunity to explore 'areas of mutual commercial interest.' It was a diplomatic visit to which the Indian government was not invited.

Why Jamnagar is not hard to work out. The US-Israel war on Iran, now in its eighth month, has disrupted energy supply from the Gulf. Twenty major refineries across West Asia have sustained damage. Diesel is in short supply in the United States with the midterm elections on November 3. Jamnagar's two refineries have a combined capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day, about 1.5 per cent of global refining capacity. Its particular advantage is feedstock flexibility: the complex can process almost any crude type, including Venezuelan, which most other refineries cannot handle economically. Kpler estimated Reliance's Venezuelan crude intake at 350,000 to 370,000 barrels per day in October. Russian crude still accounted for a third of Reliance's total intake in the July-September 2026 quarter, after having peaked at 50 per cent of intake by 2025. Rubio wants more Venezuelan crude going into Jamnagar and more refined product coming out toward the United States. The refinery sent roughly $143 million worth of products to the US last month, per the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

The protocol of the visit was unusual enough to trigger an argument. US Ambassador Gor said Washington 'expected' External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and other Indian officials to travel to Mumbai to meet Rubio. Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary, called this 'quite extraordinary.' Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, wrote that Rubio had 'summoned his employee to Mumbai.' The MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal did not initially confirm the visit, saying the government would announce details 'at the appropriate time.' Later in the week he appeared to confirm the agenda: energy, trade and investment, defence, and critical and emerging technologies. The government did not respond publicly to the 'summoned' criticism. A visiting US Secretary of State who expects the host country's foreign minister to come to him, rather than the reverse, is communicating something about how he assesses the balance of need.

The context in which that assessment is being made is worth stating plainly. The United States imposed a 50 per cent tariff on most Indian goods in August 2025. A framework agreed in February this year reduced it to 18 per cent, but trade negotiations have since stalled. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said talks had 'plateaued.' Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said the first tranche of a deal was in its 'final stages' but that India would not sign until its exporters had an advantage over rivals. Four Indian IT companies, including Infosys, TCS, Wipro and HCL, were suspended from a US labour certification scheme this year. Trump signed legislation that could impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on the largest importers of Russian oil, then waived those sanctions ahead of the November 3 elections, a waiver that directly benefits Reliance's Russian crude intake. After Jamnagar, Rubio also met Gautam Adani and Tata Group chairman N. Chandrasekaran. Sameer Lalwani of the Carnegie Endowment noted that Indian public opinion of the United States has hit a record low, even as defence and technology ties have deepened and bilateral trade grew about 12 per cent last year to nearly $240 billion.

Rubio's previous visit to India was in May, for the Quad foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi hosted by Jaishankar. That visit was about the strategic architecture of the Indo-Pacific. This one was about Venezuelan crude, diesel supply and a refinery in Gujarat that happens to be owned by Asia's richest man, who is also building a $5 billion refinery in Brownsville, Texas, with a 20-year offtake deal and operations expected around 2029. Reliance's talks in Jamnagar covered new energy giga-factories, data centres and Ambani's stated ambition to make Jamnagar a hub for deep-tech and advanced manufacturing. None of that is irrelevant to the Indo-US relationship. All of it is also irrelevant to New Delhi. The Secretary of State went to Jamnagar because Jamnagar has what he needs before November 3. The capital can wait.