US becomes top LPG supplier as India-US ties widen across sectors

India-US ties have expanded significantly over the past year, with the United States emerging as a key energy supplier to India as New Delhi looks to diversify its sources, a senior US official has said.

Speaking at a roundtable at the New York Foreign Press Centre on Thursday, US Department of State Deputy Assistant Secretary Bethany Morrison said the relationship now covers energy, defence, commercial cooperation and multilateral engagement, while South Asia has become a major priority for the Trump administration.

"When you look at India, just over the last year with the US-India partnership, the scale and breadth of that relationship has grown from last year," Morrison said. She pointed to the 10-year defence framework agreement between India and the US, along with new steps in the energy sector, as examples of the widening partnership.

She also referred to civil nuclear cooperation, saying, "India for the first time in 20 years reformed their nuclear regulatory environment by passing the SHANTI Act, and now we're moving forward on some really exciting developments in civil nuclear cooperation." On energy ties, she said, "We're now very proudly the largest exporter of LPG to India, so when we talk about diversifying energy sources, we are happy that the United States is now becoming that provider."

Morrison said cooperation between the two countries ranged from energy and major commercial deals to defence engagement and multilateral diplomatic meetings such as the Quad. She also said the broader South Asian region had become a major focus for the Trump administration. "We're very, very excited about that. It's often a region that historically gets overlooked until there's a crisis because of all – everything else happening in the world, from what's happening in Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, and then obviously land wars in Europe," she said.

She added, "But really, we see South Asia as such a critical sort of part of the world that really has not gotten enough attention, and that's where President Trump has really made sure that he has advised us to do." Morrison's remarks underlined the wider growth in India-US ties across energy, defence, commercial links and regional engagement.