At India’s flagship energy conference last year, Venezuela’s sanctions-hit vice-president Delcy Rodríguez appealed to New Delhi to resume purchases of her country’s oil, warning that “those who tried to exclude Venezuela from the international energy formula were wrong”.
A year on, Rodríguez is now Venezuela’s interim president and India is well positioned to become a beneficiary of US President Donald Trump’s recent actions against her predecessor Nicolás Maduro, analysts said.
Washington’s intervention to depose Maduro and take control of Venezuela’s energy resources has opened the door for Indian refiners to regain access to the world’s largest crude reserves, which they had largely stopped buying because of US sanctions.