Dubai, Sept. 19 -- India needs to build a multi-route energy strategy, diversify crude and gas suppliers and expand storage and port infrastructure as growing security tensions across West Asia expose vulnerabilities in its energy supply chains, experts said.
The recent flare-up in West Asia involving Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthi rebels has highlighted the risks for India of relying on a limited number of routes and infrastructure for its energy imports. It comes as the Strait of Hormuz has effectively remained blocked for months now, severely disrupting a key route for global energy supplies.
The stakes are high for India because its heavy dependence on imported oil and gas leaves the economy vulnerable to disruptions in global supply and sharp swings in energy prices.
India's overall dependence on imported primary energy was about 42 per cent in 2024-25, although its dependence on imports varies considerably by fuel. Government data shows crude oil import dependence at about 89 per cent and natural gas at about 49 per cent, while coal import dependence was about 18 per cent.
For India, experts said, the challenge is therefore not just to find alternative suppliers but to build multiple routes and logistical options that can keep supplies moving during a regional crisis.
However, they also emphasised that these options cannot fully replace Gulf supplies in the near term because of higher costs, longer transit times and compatibility issues with India's existing refining and energy infrastructure.
The Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, is a major route which carries roughly a fifth of global energy supplies during peacetime. Its disruption since February amid the Iran-Israel-US conflict has sharply restricted commercial shipping and disrupted energy supplies.
The subsequent escalation around the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb has added another layer of risk to energy and shipping routes connecting the Gulf with global markets.
Crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from key Gulf producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar traditionally reach Indian markets through routes exposed to the West Asian region's security situation.
India imported about 1.8 billion barrels of crude oil in 2025, with 48 per cent coming from the Gulf region, according to Rajeev Agarwal, a senior research consultant at the New Delhi-based Chintan Research Foundation.
"Going forward, India will have to follow a multi-pronged strategy to safeguard its energy security," Agarwal told PTI.
He said India has already diversified its crude purchases across more than 40 countries, with Russia, the US, Nigeria and Venezuela emerging as important suppliers.
Cauvery Ganapathy, a climate and energy fellow at the Dubai-based Observer Research Foundation Middle East (ORF ME), said India could in the short term reroute Gulf-origin crude through the Mediterranean Sea or tap cargoes already at sea through spot trading, swaps and other forms of international arbitrage.
"One must, however, be mindful of the limitations of this approach in terms of the volumes available as well as the competition for it," she said.
Ganapathy supported diversifying India's crude oil sourcing across different markets, but cautioned that moving away from Gulf supplies could come at a higher cost.
"The re-routing and sourcing from other countries come with their own set of concerns such as high risk premiums, higher voyage time, which can be expected to have a direct bearing on the affordability element," she told PTI over email.
Mannat Jaspal, climate and energy director at the ORF ME, said India needs to expand strategic buffers through Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) and commercial inventories.
SPRs are government-controlled stocks of crude kept for emergencies when regular supplies are disrupted.
In May, India and the UAE signed a strategic collaboration agreement under which Abu Dhabi National Oil Company could increase its crude oil 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, as well as potential LNG and LPG storage facilities in India.
"The announcement that the UAE will be increasing its crude oil storage capacity in India by almost six times the current volume is a case in point," Jaspal told PTI.
She also called for greater diversification of liquefied natural gas supplies from the US, Australia and Africa, alongside higher domestic gas production and greater use of renewable energy.
Ganapathy said expanding SPR capacity should be a priority for India, the world's third-largest oil importer, but warned that storage infrastructure must also be designed to handle different varieties of crude.
"The industrial composition that India has already built is structurally tied to the form of medium or heavy sour grade Gulf crudes (oil containing relatively high levels of sulphur)," Ganapathy said.
She pointed to Reliance Industries' Jamnagar refinery as an example of how complex refining facilities can process a wider range of crude. Greater refining flexibility, however, requires significant investment.
The UAE and Oman can provide another layer of resilience to India's energy supply chains, experts said.
Fujairah, on the UAE's Gulf of Oman coast, lies outside the Strait of Hormuz and has emerged as an important oil storage and bunkering centre.
Oman, meanwhile, has ports including Duqm and Salalah that could potentially support alternative maritime routes.
Jaspal said such ports could provide "alternative transhipment, storage and bunkering hubs that are outside the Strait of Hormuz". But she cautioned that these facilities cannot remove Hormuz exposure for oil and gas that originates inside the Persian Gulf, since those supplies still have to reach an outside port.
Agarwal said Oman's Duqm, Salalah, Sur and Muscat ports should be upgraded, with pipelines connecting oil terminals to the ports and facilities developed for loading tankers.
Ganapathy, however, highlighted another limitation. "Not every form of energy can be transported through pipelines like in the case of oil. LPG, something that India is heavily dependent on the Gulf for, being a case in point".
She said LPG requires specialised, time-sensitive logistics and also cannot remain at sea indefinitely. She also warned that alternative routes would themselves need maritime protection, extending the security challenge to the western Indian Ocean and potentially waters near Africa.
The experts said the recent developments across West Asia underline the need for India to view energy security as a combination of supply diversification, strategic reserves, flexible refining capacity, alternative ports and protected maritime corridors.
"India's ability to talk to each actor in the region at a bilateral level is crucial to being able to make any of these diversification channels work for us," Ganapathy said.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.