NEW DELHI: In a major push toward securing national energy diversification amid ongoing global supply disruptions, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri held high-level talks with the Acting President of Venezuela, H.E. Ms. Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez, in New Delhi.
The bilateral summit, which included senior ministry officials and the chairpersons of various Indian Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) oil companies, focused on accelerating institutional energy trade and expanding the operational footprint of Indian firms in Venezuela’s domestic upstream sector.
Accelerated Trade Metrics and Strategic Alignments
The diplomatic engagement comes on the heels of an exponential surge in crude oil volumes arriving at Indian ports from the South American nation, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
As geopolitical tensions continue to impact traditional crude oil imports from the Gulf region, India has increasingly leveraged its sophisticated refining sector—which is uniquely engineered to process Venezuela’s characteristically heavy crude grades—as a structural hedge.
Official data highlights a drastic upward trajectory in bilateral trade:
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Import Surge: Venezuela emerged as one of India’s leading crude oil suppliers during April and May 2026.
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Volume Multipliers: India’s average monthly imports from Venezuela skyrocketed from 64.027 Thousand Metric Tonnes (TMT) during the fiscal year 2025–26 to an unprecedented 1,047.148 TMT across April and May of the 2026–27 financial year.
Upstream Investment Expansion
During the deliberations, Minister Puri reaffirmed India’s explicit support for Venezuela’s ongoing energy infrastructure reconstruction, indicating that Indian public and private entities are fully prepared to deepen their localized asset bases.
Indian state-owned enterprises maintain an established, long-term foothold in the Venezuelan upstream sector dating back to 2008. To date, India’s cumulative capital exposure in the country’s oil sector stands at approximately USD 1 billion. These investments are concentrated primarily in two flagship extraction ventures within the resource-rich Orinoco Belt:
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The San Cristóbal Project
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The Petrocarabobo-1 Project
Acknowledging India’s role as a highly reliable economic partner, Acting President Rodríguez Gómez extended an official invitation for Indian corporate and ministerial delegations to visit Venezuela. She welcomed Indian capital and technical deployment into the country’s newly reformed oil and gas regulatory framework, citing strong structural complementarities between the two economies.
