No sensitive documents given to RIL: Deora

The government on Tuesday clarified that no papers of sensitive nature were ever given to Mukesh Ambani-run RIL or its Canadian partner Niko Resources, and added they were provided only those papers needed to implement the decision on pricing of natural gas from their field.

"No papers of secret nature have been sent to these companies (Reliance and Niko)," Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.

To a question by Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh and Abu Asim Azmi, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee-headed Empowered Group of Ministers, in a meeting on May 28, 2008, took decisions regarding the sectors to which natural gas expected from Reliance-Niko's KG-D6 field would be sold.

"Reliance and Niko being the parties to the production sharing contract (for the eastern offshore KG-D6 field) are required to implement the decisions taken by the EGoM," he said.

"In order to operationalise the decisions taken on sale of natural gas by the contractors (Reliance and Niko), the minutes of EGoM meeting were sent to them for implementation," he said.

The decisions taken in the EGoM meeting were also disseminated through a press release and put on oil ministry's website. "Since the contents of the communication were also put in the public domain, there was no secrecy attached to the communication."

The same EGoM had last year approved a price of $4.2 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu) as the price of gas to be produced by Reliance-Niko from KG-D6.