The tycoons who profit from India’s thirst for Russian oil

The last time many Americans paid any attention to Jamnagar, a sunbaked industrial stretch on the mud flats on India’s Gulf of Kutch, it was thanks to Rihanna.

- ALEX TRAVELLI

She performed there in March 2024 for an exclusive audience — Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Ivanka Trump and the like — at the prewedding party for Anant Ambani, the younger son of Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

‘They were in Jamnagar, which had no international airport or hotel rooms for most of the guests, because its port and oil refineries have become central to the Ambanis’ empire and $115 billion fortune.

Last week, Jamnagar was the backdrop for a grittier story: Its oil — some of which is imported from Russia — has become a sticking point in US-Indian relations.

Months of back-and-forth over trade between Washington and New Delhi unravelled last month, along with much of the friendly feeling between the world’s two biggest democracies. On July 30, President Donald Trump slapped India with a 25% tariff. He tossed in an insult, posting on social media that American companies would soon start drilling with India’s nemesis, Pakistan.

“Who knows,’ he wrote, “maybe they'll be selling Oil to India some day!”

One week later, Trump signed an executive order that doubled the punishment. In effect, he pushed India’s exporters into peril on the grounds that their government was aiding Russia's war aims in Ukraine by letting Indian companies profit from the international oil trade.

Trump did not name the companies. But all roads lead back to Mukesh Ambani and his company, Reliance Industries.