India, March 12 -- When the late patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani started his Indian operations as a textile trader in the 1960s, he never imagined that Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) would construct the largest grassroot refinery. Despite the apocryphal stories that he wanted an oil empire as big as that of British Petroleum, he never thought that RIL would build a mega refinery in the US, the first in the past half-a-century. Well, even the second dream, which was once hazy and nebulous, will soon turn into reality over the next few years, if everything goes according to the plans concocted by the US president, Donald Trump.

Without hints from RIL, or speculation in Indian media, Trump unleashed an oil bombshell, unlike the attacks on Iran's ...