India, Venezuela and America’s new oil diplomacy: Decoding Delcy Rodríguez’s Delhi visit

Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez’s visit to India was first announced not by Caracas or New Delhi, but by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This was not a diplomatic faux pas, but was in tune with the Trump White House’s way of asserting its dominance over the South American nation. Rubio was merely highlighting the new political reality in Venezuela, where America has stamped its influence over that country’s oil diplomacy.

As early as May 21, ahead of his trip to India, Rubio told reporters that Rodriguez would soon be visiting India. “This is an important trip, I’m glad we’re able to do it.” It reminded many of President Donald Trump taking credit for announcing the India-Pakistan ceasefire last year, hours before either New Delhi or Islamabad did so.

More from Opinion

The visit is more than a routine bilateral engagement. It is part of a broader geopolitical realignment in which Venezuelan oil is re-entering global markets under Washington-supervised arrangements while India seeks to diversify energy supplies in an increasingly volatile world.

India is well aware that buying Venezuelan oil, which is being aggressively promoted by the Trump administration, will help to ease relations with the US that had undergone several hiccups since Trump’s tariff pronouncements, as well as Washington’s growing friendship with Pakistan.

Rodríguez is visiting at a time when India, like the rest of Asia, is scrambling to secure alternative sources of oil following disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which have severely affected supplies from the Gulf, a region from which New Delhi procured most of its oil before the US-Israel war on Iran.

Oil entities in the country are already buying spot Venezuelan crude to the tune of 427,000 barrels per day, according to the latest figures available. This makes India the second-largest buyer of Venezuelan oil globally. Though Venezuelan oil is more expensive, thanks to the distance, than supplies from the Gulf and Russia, for the moment it suits India to access oil from wherever it can. For the future, the idea is to seek long-term import arrangements that could come at a discount. But these will be worked out by oil companies and not governments.

For Caracas, the stakes are equally high, if not higher. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves but desperately needs investment and export revenues to revive a dilapidated petroleum industry.

Years of hostility between the US and Venezuela’s socialist government had led to the near collapse of the country’s oil infrastructure. Successive American administrations had tried to destabilise Venezuela’s socialist regime. While previous presidents tried to weaken or subvert the regime without the use of military force, Trump went ahead with a daring military operation and kidnapped and arrested the former president Nicolás Maduro in January. He also made it very clear that America was eyeing Venezuela’s huge oil reserves. Today the US is in effective control of the Venezuelan oil industry. The acting President’s visit to India is being choreographed and planned by Washington.

Incidentally, this is Rodriguez’s sixth visit to India, but the first she has undertaken since being anointed President. India’s relations with Venezuela go back a long way. During bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Rodriguez said that India had stood by her country during good times and bad. Venezuela regarded India as the “preferred partner” for development.

As Rudrendra Tandon, Secretary (East) in the MEA, told reporters after the talks, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and India, as a growing economy, needs uninterrupted and stable energy to fuel its growth; therefore, “there is a complementarity” between the two in the oil sector, both “upstream and downstream”.

He did not go into details. Both countries wanted to expand their economic relationship beyond energy. “Venezuela is now showing the first signs of moving to a path of sustained growth,” Tandon said, and therefore there were huge opportunities for Indian companies. Pharma, the automobile sector, animal husbandry and mining — Venezuela has large quantities of minerals, gold, iron ore, bauxite and diamonds — were areas where the two countries could work together.

Rodríguez’s visit underscores how energy security is reshaping diplomatic priorities. Both countries realise that pragmatism is the only option at a time of global uncertainty and in a world defined by energy insecurity and strategic competition.

(Seema Guha is a journalist who has extensively covered foreign policy and geopolitics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)