India and Azerbaijan Agree to Deepen Oil and Energy Ties

India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Azerbaijan's leadership agreed in Baku on 23 October to deepen cooperation in oil and energy and to exchange trade delegations, during a one-day visit that comes as India buys far more Azerbaijani crude. India bought $399.2 million of Azerbaijani oil in January to September 2026, about seven times as much by value as a year earlier, according to State Customs Committee data reported by Report.

President Ilham Aliyev received Jaishankar, who said he was visiting on the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and passed on greetings from President Droupadi Murmu and Modi, according to the official account of the meeting. Aliyev recalled his earlier meeting with Modi in Bishkek. The two sides discussed political, trade and economic, high-tech, cultural and humanitarian cooperation, noted that both countries belong to the Global South, and agreed to increase political contacts and arrange reciprocal visits, including economic and business delegations.

Jaishankar also held talks with Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. Speaking to the press afterwards, he said the two economies were complementary and that there was "very good scope for further enhancement of our bilateral trade and investment", PTI reported. He said his visit followed up the Modi and Aliyev meeting on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Bishkek.

Crude flows to India rise

The customs figures show India took 524,337.96 tonnes of Azerbaijani crude in the first nine months of the year, four times the volume of a year earlier. That placed India fourth among buyers by value, behind Italy, the Czech Republic and Romania. Italy remained the largest market at $5.51 billion.

Azerbaijan's total crude exports in the period fell 6.86% in volume to 15.83 million tonnes, while their value rose 13.03% to $10.1 billion. Higher prices have carried export earnings as volumes decline, a pattern CBJ has tracked through the year.

India's ONGC Videsh already holds stakes in Azerbaijan's main oil assets. Its total investment in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) fields and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline exceeds $1.2 billion, according to an India-Azerbaijan brief from India's Ministry of External Affairs dated April 2026. On 29 November 2024 the company bought an additional 0.615% interest in ACG from Equinor for $60 million, together with 0.737% of Equinor's BTC shares, taking its stakes to 2.925% in ACG and 3.097% in BTC.

Bilateral trade reached $401 million in 2025, the ministry's brief said, with Indian exports of $226 million and imports of $175 million, mostly crude oil. Trade was around $50 million in 2005.

Corridors and flights

Jaishankar placed transport alongside energy. "We are both invested in the International North-South Transport Corridor. That's very important for us," he said, adding that the two sides agreed to "coordinate more closely in that regard". The 7,200-km multi-mode freight route is designed to link India with Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe.

On air links, Jaishankar noted that daily flights operate between the two countries and said the sides should consider how to grow them. The April brief listed 14 weekly Azerbaijan Airlines flights between India and Azerbaijan after IndiGo suspended its seven weekly Delhi to Baku flights. Azerbaijan received 166,944 tourists from India in 2025, making India its fourth largest source of visitors after Russia, Türkiye and Iran, the brief said.

Jaishankar thanked Azerbaijan for helping evacuate Indian nationals, especially students, from Iran during the recent conflict, welcomed the peace agreement that Azerbaijan and Armenia initialled in Washington on 8 August 2025, which has not yet been signed, and invited Bayramov to visit India.

What it means for business

For Azerbaijan, India is becoming a meaningful outlet for crude at a time when sales to some European buyers, including Germany and Portugal, have fallen. For Indian companies, the agreement to exchange business delegations opens a channel beyond oil, in a market where Indian investment has so far centred on ONGC Videsh's upstream and pipeline stakes.

The transport agenda links to Azerbaijan's push to raise transit volumes on both its north-south and east-west routes. Transit cargo through Azerbaijan passed 12 million tonnes in the first nine months, CBJ reported on 24 October. The next step to watch is whether the promised trade delegations travel before the end of the year and whether airlines add capacity on the Delhi and Mumbai routes.

Correction, 25 October 2026: An earlier version referred to an August peace agreement. Azerbaijan and Armenia initialled the agreement in Washington on 8 August 2025; it has not yet been signed.