Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in India on Tuesday to meet with Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and top business leaders, including the two richest men in Asia, Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.

Trade, energy, and the situation in the Middle East were at the top of Rubio’s agenda.

The State Department said Rubio “reiterated that increased energy trade with the United States can play a transformative role in diversifying India’s supply chains while meeting its sizable consumer demand” during his meeting with Jaishankar in Mumbai.

Rubio “also commended recent progress in bilateral defense and civil nuclear cooperation, and advocated for the increased purchase of U.S. technologies and systems, which can enhance the security and prosperity of both our countries.” 

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In other words, Rubio strongly encouraged India to buy oil and advanced military hardware from America instead of Russia. During a press conference in Mumbai, Rubio specifically suggested India should buy more oil from Venezuela to feed its impressive refining capabilities.

“I’m not claiming to you that Venezuela alone can fill the hole that could be caused by some of the things that are happening around the world, but I think over time it most certainly can, and in the short term it can somewhat provide relief. So that’s one of the things we’ll talk about with India,” he said.

Rubio hailed India as a “refining superpower” and said current tensions around the world have highlighted the strategic importance of oil refineries. He confirmed that he would visit the Reliance Industries refinery in Jamnagar – the largest refinery in the world – on Wednesday and meet with the company’s CEO, Mukesh Ambani.

President Donald Trump announced in March that Reliance is investing some $300 billion in the United States, including an oil refinery in Texas. Reliance has already become the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude outside the United States, and most of that oil is shipped to the Jamnagar refinery.

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When a reporter said it was unusual to see the U.S. Secretary of State meeting with a foreign CEO, Rubio replied that he also serves the Trump administration as National Security Adviser, and “energy is related to national security.”

“Countries fight wars over energy, as an example. Economies collapse over lack of energy. So we’re going to go see a company that has a tremendous amount of refining capability, so it makes all the sense in the world to talk to them about it,” he said, strongly hinting that Venezuelan oil might come up during that discussion, although he would not outright confirm it.

Rubio confirmed that the administration is still concerned about India’s purchases of Russian oil, which have declined under pressure from the U.S., but are still prodigious enough to leave India as Russia’s second-best oil customer after China.

“I think what India has expressed repeatedly is their desire to diversify their energy portfolio, which is a smart thing to do. Obviously, it’s not easy to do that from one day to the next. So I think they’ve made substantial progress in that regard, and we’re happy to see that,” he said.

Rubio said during the press conference, and during an appearance with Jaishankar at the Freedom 250 reception in Mumbai, that the high volume of trips he and the Indian foreign minister have paid to each other’s countries is a sign of how strongly India and the U.S. value their relationship.

“If you think about the story and the history of the 21st century, it’s being written in this region and it’s being written right now. One day someone will write a book about the history of the 21st century, and there will be a chapter in there about other regions in the world, but the 21st century will be defined, for better and for worse, by what happens in this region. We know that. We can sense it; we can feel it,” he said.

Rubio said the rapid pace of advancements during the Information Age, including the rise of artificial intelligence – which he referred to as “super intelligence,” as President Trump prefers – made the relationship between India and the United States pivotal to the history of the 21st Century.

“On that issue, the United States and India are aligned, perfectly aligned. We view it the same way. We have the same expertise. We have the same talented people working on it from engineers to creative thinkers and innovators. We are aligned and we want to see a world in which super intelligence is used to the betterment of man and one in which the harms that it could cause are mitigated,” he said.

Jaishankar added that India and the United States have formed a stronger partnership as they confront the menace of terrorism, a brotherhood forged during the 9/11 attack on America and the horrific 11/26/2008 massacre in Mumbai, which Indians often refer to as the “26/11” attack. The Indian foreign minister noted that six Americans were among the 164 people killed on 26/11.

“We are clear on the right to defend ourselves against terrorism and expect that our partners show zero tolerance towards terrorism as well,” Jaishankar said after thanking the Trump administration for extraditing 26/11 suspect Tahawwur Hussain Rana. India has been considerably less pleased with how its neighbor Pakistan handles terrorism, so Jaishankar might have hoped his remarks could be heard clearly in Islamabad.

A senior U.S. official told reporters that Rubio met with Jaishankar in Mumbai, the financial capital of India, rather than New Delhi to focus on “commercial diplomacy” – including the long-gestating bilateral U.S.-India trade deal. The official said there were only a few details left to hammer out, and Rubio was upbeat that the deal would be completed soon.