Oil and Natural Gas Corp is in talks to hire Reliance Industries' unutilised production facilities on the east to quickly bring to production its gas finds in the Krishna Godavari basin.
RIL has been using gas from GAIL during the past three months to test-fire the 1,440-km east-west pipeline, India's longest, from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh to Bharuch in Gujarat. Only 100 km of the pipeline remains to be test-fired. It will transport gas from the world's largest gas discovery at the Krishna-Godavari basin in the Bay of Bengal to Jamnagar in Gujarat, where it has set up the world's largest petroleum refinery.
Reliance Industries has sought tripling of its KG-D6 gas price from April 1, 2014 after the current below market rate of USD 4.205 per mmBtu expires.
The government has asked Reliance Industries to supply natural gas from the company's eastern offshore D6 fields to the beleaguered Dabhol power plant, a segment that gets top preference for gas allocation along with fertiliser units.
RIL had in 2006 proposed to invest $2.234 billion in developing the Dhirubhai-26 or MA discovery, the only oil find in the KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) block in Krishna Godavari basin off the east coast.
RIL on June 15 wrote to Oil Ministry proposing to price natural gas it produces from the Krishna Godavari basin block in Bay of Bengal at a rate equivalent to price India pays for importing liquefied natural gas, official sources said.
Needed, it says, for covering its return and risks; also wants govt to stick to contract on output sharing
Reliance Industries will not "scale down" production from Krishna Godavari basin to accommodate RNRL's future needs, nor would it renegotiate the government-approved price of the gas, the Bombay High Court was told on Thursday.
Reliance Industries is ostensibly seeking a 25 per cent increase in the price of natural gas it produces from the eastern offshore Krishna-Godavari Basin after it wrote to the Oil Ministry saying it has customers willing to pay more than the government-approved price.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries Limited began gas production from the Krishna-Godavari basin in April, 2009, and its 60 million standard cubic metres per day output led to a 75 per cent jump in natural gas availability in the country to 140 mmscmd.
After a long wait for government approval, Reliance Industries (RIL) is to begin work on development of four satellite fields -- D-2, D-6, D-19 and D-22 -- in India's largest gas field, block D6 in the Krishna-Godavari basin, or KG-D6.
State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) plans to invest USD 2.894 billion (about Rs 15,340 crore) in developing its ultra-deepsea UD-1 gas discovery in the Krishna Godavari basin by 2016-17.
Gas production from the country's biggest gas block is less than a year away, but Reliance Industries (RIL), operator of the block in the Krishna-Godavari basin, and Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL), the biggest buyer of gas from the block, have not made headway on renegotiating the sales agreement.
Monday's meeting of the empowered group of ministers on pricing of gas from Reliance Industries' D6 block in the Krishna-Godavari basin has proved inconclusive.
The fertiliser plant would use natural gas from the company's prolific gas field off in Krishna Godavari basin off the Andhra coast as feedstock.
This follows a letter by RIL to the ministry, justifying the increase in capex.
This is significantly higher than the government revenues of Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) that ADAG has been claiming in an advertising campaign that it launched on August 17. The exercise marks the first time the directorate general of hydrocarbon, the upstream oil regulator, has worked out such an estimate. The exercise is not carried out in the normal course for oil or gas fields.
Very little notice, however, has been taken of the fact that Reliance Gas Transportation and Infrastructure Ltd, which set up the pipeline network for transport of this gas which has had rival users clamouring for government priority, is no longer owned by RIL, but by the latter's chairman and managing director, Mukesh Ambani. The change took place three years earlier and went largely unnoticed, even though RGTIL is crucial for RIL's burgeoning gas business.
After the euphoria over the recent oil and gas discoveries made by upstream behemoth Oil and Natural Gas Corporation
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Wednesday asserted in the Supreme Court that it did not receive any favour from the government in the contract for exploration of oil and gas from Krishna-Godavari basin.
According to sources, the government has provided a list of 20 companies to Reliance Industries for sale of gas as per the gas utilisation policy. Some of these companies include Nagarjuna Fertilizer & Chemicals, Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals, Tata Fertilizers and Oswal Chemicals & Fertilizers among others.
Reliance Industries has said the natural gas output at its Krishna Godavari basin KG-D6 fields averaged 54.5 million cubic meters a day in the quarter ended December 31, 2010, down from 60 mmscmd achieved in April.
Mukesh Ambani-led RIL has sought to lift the sty as it claims it's ready to produce gas next month. Arguing before the court against vacation of the stay, RNRL senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi said, "There is no immediate supply of gas. Let the directorate general of hydrocarbons make a statement when the company is ready to produce the gas."
The development plan under preparation is for earlier find in KG-8 well in June 2005. GPSC believes it will take two years from the date all approvals are in place, including the one for development plan, which details investments and volumes to be produced, for starting production from the block KG-OSN-2001/3 off the Andhra coast.
The Union government today filed a fresh affidavit in the Bombay high court, which is hearing a dispute over supply of gas from Krishna Godavari basin, stating that any sale price less than $ 4.2 per mmBtu is not compatible with decisions taken by a ministerial panel.
Lawyer T S Doabia told the court the government's approval was necessary for the rate at which RIL sells the gas to other private parties. The division bench of Justices J N Patel and K K Tated pointed out that, according to RNRL, the government stated in Parliament it would not be fixing the gas price, except for its own share. When told this was not contrary to what Doabia was saying, the court asked him to file an affidavit, clarifying the government's position.
State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation plans to invest over $10 billion in bringing to production gas discoveries off the east coast, its director (exploration) D K Pande said on Tuesday.
UBS Investment Research in its latest report estimated that ONGC and GSPC may get at least $5.5 per million British thermal unit for natural gas they will pump out from their respective Krishna-Godavari basin blocks. RIL is to get a fixed price of $4.2 per mmBtu for gas it would produce from Dhirubhai-1 and 3 fields in KG-D6 block from December-January, for the next five years.
Justice Roshan Dalvi sought to recuse herself from the case involving Reliance Industries Ltd and state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation over the supply of gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin on Wednesday.
A division bench of Justices J N patel and K K Tated was hearing a case regarding the dispute between Anil-led Relaince Natural Resources Ltd and Mukesh's Reliance Industries Ltd over the gas supply master agreement (GSMA) whereby RIL will be supplying gas for RNRL's power plants.
Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Energy has approached state-owned gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd for transportation of gas to its proposed 4,000 MW power plant at Dadri.
Reliance Industries is in talks with global energy majors, like British Gas of the UK, Chevron Corp of the US, Exxon and Shell for a possible stake sale in its Krishna-Godavari basin gas fields. RIL is looking for a strategic partner for its KG-D6 gas block to get deep sea exploration technology. The percentage of stake to be divested has not been firmed up & may depend on the value that the partner was bringing in. The block contains over 50trillion cubic feet of gas reserve
MA fields were producing around 32,000-33,000 barrels of oil per day and 8 million standard cubic meters per day of gas.
RNRL had sought 28 mscmd of gas for 17 years at $2.34 per million British thermal units (mBtu) from Mukesh Ambani's RIL.
Read the full text of the Supreme Court ruling in the Krishna Godavari Basin gas dispute between Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd and Anil Ambani's Reliance Natural Resources Ltd.
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