Reliance Industries [Get Quote] and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation will present their views as producers on pricing of natural gas on Tuesday to a panel of top government officials formed to resolve the vexed issue.

RIL, which is to begin natural gas production from its prolific KG-D6 block off the east coast from July 2008, and ONGC [Get Quote], which has also discovered substantial gas reserves in eastern offshore, would make separate presentations to the committee of secretaries, official sources said.

The CoS, comprising secretaries of petroleum, power, fertilizer, expenditure and law, would in the morning hear consumers' perspective on natural gas pricing when fertilizer ministry would make a presentation and in the afternoon discuss the issue with gas producers.

ON July 6, power ministry had on July 6 made a presentation to the CoS demanding gas at affordable prices for power plants to keep electricity generation cost low.

Fertilizer ministry was also scheduled to make presentation that day but could not, due to paucity of time. Sources said Power Ministry demanded regulating pricing of natural gas to be produced by Reliance from KG-D6 and said the current administered price of Rs 3.2 per cubic meters ($1.8 per million British thermal unit) for ONGC gas was the ideal price for power generation.

On RIL's proposed pricing formula for KG gas, it said gas price or formulae was "market-distorted, not true market- discovered" as price bids were called from buyers picked by RIL.

The delivered price of gas of around $6 per mBtu at power plant would make power generation unsustainable, power ministry had said.