As the first stop of a five-nation tour covering the UAE, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Italy from Friday to 20th of this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Abu Dhabi this Friday.
As rising tensions in West Asia continue to drive up global oil prices and strain India’s foreign exchange reserves, energy security is expected to dominate talks. With the fragile US-Iran ceasefire under severe strain and the Strait of Hormuz closure disrupting global energy flows, the visit comes at a moment of acute geopolitical pressure.
Aseem Mahajan, Additional Secretary, Gulf Affairs, the Ministry of External Affairs, underscored the depth of the energy relationship, describing the UAE as “an important partner in our energy security”.
Mahajan added that the UAE was India’s fourth-largest crude oil source last year and met about 11 percent of its requirement. With regard to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Indian companies and ADNOC Gas have joined hands through a long-term supply contracts for a 4.5 MT a year, which makes India the biggest buyer of UAE’s LNG, he further added.
Also, he said, the UAE is India’s largest LPG source, catering around 40 percent of the country’s our requirement, besides the second largest destination for India’s petroleum exports.
The Additional Secretary underlined that Indian companies have invested over $1.2 billion in UAE upstream energy assets, as Bharat PetroResources Ltd’s confirmation of an oil discovery in Abu Dhabi’s Onshore Block 1 in January this year, which is the first such upstream find by India in the region.
He also informed that the gulf nation is also the first country, which as partnered with India on strategic petroleum reserves, storing over five million barrels of crude oil at Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd’s facility in Mangalore.
