The latest escalation in West Asia has revived a difficult question for India: can the country keep crude oil, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas moving if the routes that carry them are disrupted? The answer depends not only on finding new suppliers, but also on whether India has enough strategic storage, flexible ports, compatible refineries and protected maritime corridors to absorb a shock.
The issue is particularly important because India’s energy security is closely tied to infrastructure located outside its borders. Government data cited in the report puts India’s overall dependence on imported primary energy at about 42% in 2024-25. The dependence is much higher for individual fuels: about 89% for crude oil, 49% for natural gas and 18% for coal. A disruption to shipping therefore has consequences that can move quickly from international waters to refineries, distribution networks, households and industrial consumers.
The latest flare-up involving Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi rebels has highlighted those vulnerabilities, according to the report. It also says that the Strait of Hormuz has remained effectively blocked for months, disrupting a route that carries roughly a fifth of global energy supplies during peacetime. The escalation around the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandab has added another risk to the shipping network linking the Gulf with global markets.
For India, the problem is not simply that a large share of imported energy comes from the Gulf. It is that several fuel streams and supply routes are exposed to the same regional geography. Crude oil, liquefied natural gas and LPG from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar traditionally reach India through routes vulnerable to security disruptions.
The scale of this dependence is visible in India’s crude purchases. Rajeev Agarwal, senior research consultant at the New Delhi-based Chintan Research Foundation, told PTI that India imported about 1.8 billion barrels of crude oil in 2025, with 48% coming from the Gulf region. Agarwal said India had diversified its crude purchases across more than 40 countries, with Russia, the United States, Nigeria and Venezuela becoming important suppliers. But diversification of suppliers does not automatically create diversification of routes or infrastructure.
That distinction is central to the energy-security challenge. A refinery may be able to buy crude from another country, but the cargo still needs a viable maritime path, insurance, port capacity, storage and a processing system capable of handling the grade of oil. If any one of those links is constrained, the apparent choice of suppliers may not translate into physical resilience.
### Alternative routes cannot replace Gulf infrastructure overnight
The UAE and Oman are being discussed as potential additional nodes in India’s energy network because their geography offers access to the Gulf of Oman and the wider Indian Ocean. Fujairah, on the UAE’s Gulf of Oman coast, is outside the Strait of Hormuz and has developed into a major oil-storage and bunkering centre. Oman has ports including Duqm and Salalah that could support alternative maritime routes.
Mannat Jaspal, climate and energy director at the Dubai-based Observer Research Foundation Middle East, said these ports could provide alternative transhipment, storage and bunkering hubs outside the Strait of Hormuz. Agarwal said Oman’s Duqm, Salalah, Sur and Muscat ports should be upgraded, with pipelines linking oil terminals to ports and facilities for loading tankers.
However, the report makes clear that geography alone does not create an alternative supply chain. Oil and gas originating inside the Persian Gulf would still need to reach an outside port before it could bypass the Strait. That means Fujairah or an Omani port could reduce exposure at one stage of the journey, but cannot eliminate the vulnerability of supplies that begin behind the chokepoint.
There are also cost and compatibility constraints. Cauvery Ganapathy, climate and energy fellow at ORF Middle East, said India could temporarily reroute Gulf-origin crude through the Mediterranean or use cargoes already at sea through spot trading, swaps and other international arrangements. She cautioned, however, that available volumes would be limited and competition for them could be high.
Ganapathy also said that sourcing from other markets and rerouting cargoes would bring higher risk premiums and longer voyage times, with a direct effect on affordability. The consequence is that resilience has a price. Building multiple options may protect physical supply, but those options can be more expensive than the normal routes on which India’s energy system currently depends.
### Storage is the missing buffer between disruption and shortage
Strategic petroleum reserves are intended to provide a government-controlled crude buffer when regular supplies are interrupted. The report says India needs to expand both its strategic reserves and commercial inventories. The distinction matters because a reserve system is not only about the number of barrels stored underground or in tanks; it also depends on how quickly those stocks can be released, transported and processed.
India and the UAE signed a strategic collaboration agreement in May under which Abu Dhabi National Oil Company could increase its crude storage in India’s strategic petroleum reserves to up to 30 million barrels. The agreement also includes exploring crude storage in Fujairah as part of India’s strategic petroleum reserve, along with potential LNG and LPG storage facilities in India.
Jaspal described the proposed increase in UAE-linked crude storage in India as almost six times the current volume. Ganapathy said expanding strategic petroleum reserve capacity should be a priority for India, which the report describes as the world’s third-largest oil importer. She also warned that storage infrastructure must be capable of handling different varieties of crude.
That qualification exposes an institutional issue often hidden by headline storage figures. Oil is not a single interchangeable product from an infrastructure perspective. Different crude varieties can have different processing requirements, and storage capacity is useful only when it is connected to refineries and logistics systems that can handle the stored material. A larger reserve without operational compatibility would not provide the same level of protection as a flexible reserve.
The same principle applies to gas. Jaspal called for greater diversification of LNG supplies from the United States, Australia and Africa, alongside higher domestic gas production and greater use of renewable energy. But the report does not establish that these alternatives can immediately replace Gulf supplies. Their value lies in widening India’s options over time rather than providing a complete short-term substitute during a major disruption.
### LPG shows why one route strategy cannot fit every fuel
The infrastructure challenge becomes more complicated when the fuel changes. Ganapathy pointed out that not every energy source can be shifted through alternative routes in the same way. Oil can be moved through a combination of tankers, storage and pipelines, but LPG requires specialised and time-sensitive logistics and cannot remain at sea indefinitely.
This creates a particular vulnerability for India because the country is heavily dependent on the Gulf for LPG, according to the report. Alternative ports may support crude storage or bunkering, but LPG resilience requires appropriate terminals, vessels, storage systems and distribution links. A port strategy designed mainly around crude cannot automatically serve household and industrial LPG demand.
The security burden also expands when routes are diversified. Ganapathy warned that alternative corridors would need maritime protection, potentially extending the challenge into the western Indian Ocean and waters near Africa. In other words, rerouting energy does not remove risk; it can shift the location and operating requirements of that risk.
This is why energy security increasingly resembles an urban infrastructure question. Refineries, ports, pipelines, storage depots and distribution networks are physical systems that determine whether energy reaches factories, transport operators, commercial buildings and households. Their performance depends on coordination between national energy policy, port authorities, shipping operators, security agencies, refiners and fuel distributors.
### The policy challenge is coordination, not only capacity
The evidence in the report points to a multi-pronged strategy: diversify suppliers, expand strategic and commercial inventories, improve port infrastructure, develop alternative maritime hubs, strengthen refining flexibility and protect shipping corridors. It also points to a need for different policies for different fuels rather than treating all imported energy as one category.
The India-UAE agreement provides one example of how storage partnerships can link overseas producers with infrastructure located in India and at external ports. Oman’s proposed role would require further upgrades to ports, pipelines and tanker-loading facilities. But the report does not establish implementation timelines or the full financing structure for those upgrades. Those details will determine whether the proposals become operational resilience or remain strategic intentions.
The numbers show why the issue cannot be treated as a temporary shipping concern. With crude import dependence at about 89% and nearly half of 2025 crude imports coming from the Gulf, India’s exposure is built into the structure of its energy system. Supplier diversification has reduced concentration in purchasing, but it has not removed the importance of Gulf geography, maritime routes and specialised infrastructure.
The larger urban question is whether India’s energy network has enough redundancy to protect daily economic life during a prolonged regional crisis. The answer will depend on more than the next cargo or the next diplomatic agreement. It will depend on whether reserves can be accessed, whether ports can receive and transfer the right fuels, whether refineries can process different crude grades, and whether maritime corridors can remain secure.
The supplied evidence confirms that UAE and Omani ports could add resilience, but not instantly replace Gulf routes or eliminate exposure to the Strait of Hormuz. It also shows that India’s energy-security response must be designed as a connected system of suppliers, storage, ports, pipelines, refineries and protected shipping lanes. The next developments to monitor are the expansion of UAE-linked storage, the proposed role of Fujairah, upgrades at Omani ports and the diversification of LNG and LPG logistics.
