Involved in the trading of oil, the company purchases crude oil from overseas suppliers and ships it to the Sikka port to be processed at Reliance’s mammoth refinery at Jamnagar. It then purchases refined products from the refinery for supply overseas.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries is India’s largest company by revenues and reported consolidated revenues of ₹10.71 trillion (around $125 billion) in fiscal 2025.
Oil-trading Reliance International had revenues of $3.9 billion in its first year of operations ending March 2022. However, revenues ballooned from the subsequent year, reaching $30.8 billion. The company reported an income of $58.1 billion for the 15-month period ending March 2025. This included income from both the sale of crude oil to Reliance Industries and the sale of refined petroleum products to other companies.
Mint could not ascertain whether this subsidiary is engaged in trading of Russian crude oil, but its surge in fortunes coincides with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent the global oil markets in a tizzy and made Russian oil available at steep discounts for Indian and Chinese buyers.
Since FY24, Reliance Industries has been classifying Reliance International as a material subsidiary, a tag shared by only five other of its units. The company defines material subsidiaries as those which have an income or net-worth exceeding a tenth of the company’s consolidated income or net-worth, respectively.
Other material subsidiaries include IPO-bound Jio Platforms Ltd, telecommunications unit Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, retail units Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd and Reliance Retail Ltd, and another oil trading entity Reliance Global Energy Services (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
Material work
In FY25, Reliance Industries purchased ₹1.48 trillion worth of products, mainly crude oil, from Reliance International, as per the former’s annual report. In the same year, it sold ₹1.97 trillion worth of refined petroleum products to the unit. Sales to Reliance International accounted for 18.4% of the consolidated revenue of Reliance Industries.
Reliance Industries meaningfully ramped up its purchase of Russian oil from April 2022 and by July that year Russia had displaced Iraq as the company’s largest supplier, as per data from Kpler, a commodities and energy market intelligence firm.
A spokesperson for Reliance Industries said that the company operates through a number of subsidiaries in different parts of the world including the UAE, Singapore, the US and the UK. These subsidiaries, based in key global trading hubs, “help us to scout for cheap crude and product placement in the regions they operate, giving us operational flexibility and efficiency,” the spokesperson said on email.
The company has been operating in the UAE from as early as 2006-07, sourcing feedstock from the Middle East and North Africa and selling products in those regions, the spokesperson said.
“Since Reliance International is a subsidiary, which folds into RIL, there is no financial gain, but purely works as an efficient tool for crude procurement and product placement,” the spokesperson added.
Trade shift to the UAE
The United Arab Emirates, particularly Dubai, has emerged as a key beneficiary of the Western sanctions on Russia, as oil traders, shippers and financiers made a beeline for the middle eastern country after sanctions and other restrictions made business with the Russians difficult from other key hubs like Geneva and Singapore.
“Many oil traders have shifted their operations from Switzerland to Dubai, since the Russian oil sanctions to engage with and trade in Russian oil without falling foul of sanctions,” said Vaibhav Raghunandan, EU-Russia analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finland-based non-profit think tank.
For instance, companies based out of Dubai are not required to apply the $60 per barrel price cap on Russian crude that most Western countries levy, he said.
“This has meant that there has been a significant growth in ship managers and operators based out of the UAE. Our analysis had previously found that 41% of Russian ‘shadow’ tankers are registered in the UAE,” Raghunandan said.
The UAE also serves as a hub for storage terminals which are used to disseminate products destined for Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean, he said, adding that with the EU’s upcoming ban on petroleum products made from Russian crude, flows from UAE-based terminals may register an increase. Indian exporters could theoretically use the UAE as a conduit for accessing the European market. However, the data doesn’t show any shift to UAE-based terminals so far, Raghunandan said.
Reliance International is based in the Abu Dhabi Global Market, an international financial centre and free economic zone in UAE’s capital city, which provides zero corporate tax for up to 50 years to attract business.
Surging Russian oil
Reliance Industries has been the largest purchaser of Russian crude oil in India since the start of the Ukraine invasion. Of the 1.22 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil that it purchased on average between April 2022 and October 2025, about 425,000 barrels, or more than a third, were from Russia, as per Kpler data. Iraq, the second largest supplier, shipped an average of 218,000 bpd in this period, down from an average of 274,000 in the preceding 15 months.
In December 2024, the company signed a 10-year deal with Russia’s Rosneft to buy 500,000 bpd of crude oil. Reliance’s purchase of Russian oil intensified in recent months, with more than 600,000 barrels a day being purchased consistently every month since March, accounting for over half of the company’s total crude oil purchase.
But, Reliance halted its inflow of Russian oil following last month’s sanctions by the US on two of Russia’s largest oil company and scooped up over 12 million barrels of crude oil in the spot market from the Middle East and the Americas in October, Reuters reported last week citing trade sources.
The Donald Trump administration in the US in October put sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil in a bid to dent Vladimir Putin’s ability to fund the war in Ukraine. The US has also threatened secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions and companies that continue to do business with these sanctioned companies, which is expected to push Indian buyers to cut the purchase of Russian oil.
Meanwhile, the European Union has set a requirement that fuel imported into the bloc from 2026 must be proven to not be of Russian origin, closing a key export market for Indian refiners buying Russian crude oil.
Reliance Industries said last month that it was assessing the implications of the sanctions and that it will comply with the EU’s guidelines on the import of refined products into Europe.
“As is customary in the industry, supply contracts evolve to reflect changing market and regulatory conditions. Reliance will address these conditions while maintaining the relationships with its suppliers. Reliance is confident that its time-tested, diversified crude sourcing strategy will continue to ensure stability and reliability in its refinery operations for meeting the domestic and export requirements, including to Europe,” a Reliance Industries spokesperson said last month.
