India, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates have renewed their push to fast-track the stalled Trincomalee oil hub, with Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri declaring there is “no further time to lose” on the trilateral energy project.
Addressing the media in Colombo following Indian Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan’s bilateral visit, Misri said the Trincomalee oil farm project and the proposed India–Sri Lanka oil pipeline had been formally taken up in the meeting with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Sunday. He said both sides had agreed on the need to get the project off the ground quickly.
“There is no further time to lose in making progress on strategic projects such as these,” Misri said. The initiative has been under discussion since 2023, with the UAE involved as a third partner. While no firm timeline has been set, Misri described it as a strategic investment with “a significant final outlay.”
He pointed to the current Middle East conflict and the Hormuz disruption as direct evidence of the hub’s value. Had the facility been completed, Misri suggested, it “could have been particularly useful at a time like this” — a reference to the fuel-price shock and shipping-premium surge that has hit Sri Lanka’s import bill since early April.
Sri Lanka, India and the UAE signed a trilateral agreement roughly a year ago, after two years of negotiations, to establish a multi-product oil pipeline linking the two South Asian neighbours and to build the Trincomalee oil storage complex. The Newswire report cited the Economic Times as a secondary source.
The statement amplifies earlier comments at the AKD-Radhakrishnan bilateral meeting, adding the UAE dimension and a clear urgency framing that was missing from Sunday’s first round of reporting. With the IMF on Monday warning of recession risk from a prolonged Iran war, the economic case for accelerating the hub has sharpened.
