Reliance Gas, which had successfully bid for three cities -- Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh and Yanam in Pondicherry -- during the second round of bidding for CGD in 2009.
India is preoccupied with analysing the US sanctions, which may cut off India's access to discounted Russian crude and force it to buy at market prices.
The Iran-Israel conflict has further increased global economic uncertainties, impacting world trade, including India's exports, as it is expected to drive up both air and sea freight rates, exporters say. They said that India's exports to Europe and counters like Russia may get impacted due to this war.
Though ONGC and OIL are major producers of natural gas, they currently have no presence in its retailing and marketing, a field dominated by GAIL and its joint ventures.
The government on Thursday hiked by 62 per cent the price of natural gas that is used to produce electricity, make fertilisers and turned into CNG to use as fuel in automobiles and cooking gas for household kitchens. This is the first increase in rates since April 2019 and comes on back of firming benchmark international prices but does not reflect the spurt in spot or current price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) witnessed during the last couple of weeks. The oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) said the rates paid for gas produced from fields given to state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will be $2.90 per million British thermal unit for the six-month period beginning April 1.
After months of a bitter row over legalities of Indraprastha Gas Ltd's operations in the National Capital Territory, the oil regulator has authorised the company to retail CNG (compressed natural gas) to automobiles and piped gas to households.
The government on Monday scrapped 30-month old windfall profit tax on domestically-produced crude oil and on export of jet fuel (ATF), diesel and petrol following a decline in international oil prices. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary tabled a notification in Rajya Sabha scrapping the levy on crude oil produced by firms like state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and exports of fuels done by companies like Reliance Industries Ltd.
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.
The government on Wednesday mandated the petroleum ministry to hold dialogue with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Myanmar to secure natural gas supplies through pipelines to meet demand of the country.
RIL had drawn 58.67 bcm of gas from four wells.
The petroleum ministry is likely to advocate allowing its public sector units like ONGC to bid for acquiring management control in oil refiner HPCL, which the government on Monday said would be put on the block.\n\n
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Adani-Total Gas Ltd and Shell were among the 29 companies that bid and bought natural gas to be produced from the deepest field in the KG-D6 block of Reliance Industries Ltd and bp, sources said. IOC walked away with almost half of the 6 million standard cubic meters per day of gas sold in an e-auction on Wednesday while state-owned gas utility GAIL bought 0.7 mmscmd, Adani-Total Gas Ltd 0.4 mmscmd, Shell 0.5 mmscmd, GSPC 0.25 mmscmd and IGS another 0.5 mmscmd, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. Reliance-bp on Wednesday held an e-auction for sale of gas from the MJ field in their eastern offshore KG-D6 block after incorporating the government's new marketing rules to give CNG-selling city gas companies first priority over supplies.
Oil regulator PNGRB has virtually put Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on notice by inviting bids for sections of two natural gas pipelines that were previously awarded to the Mukesh Ambani-run firm.
While most analysts are expecting poor results from oil marketing companies (OMCs) in the first quarter of 2024-25 (Q1FY25) and even in the first half (H1) of FY25, GAIL (India) could be an outlier. Upstream producers, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India (OIL) could do well due to strong crude and gas prices, but refiners are likely to see weak margins and the impact of frozen prices during the election period will also be negative.
The petroleum ministry said there was no proposal to merge IOC and ONGC though the divestment ministry had made such a suggestion.
ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, has proposed to buy the entire gas production from Sakhalin-I field in Russia and import the same in the form of LNG to India.
India on Tuesday ruled out importing natural gas from Iran through an onland pipeline.
Gail India has protested Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar's plans to open up laying of natural gas pipelines to the private sector, saying competition cannot protect consumer interest.
The trade war between the US and China is expected to benefit Indian exporters in increasing their shipments to the American market, sources said. They said the country was the fourth-largest gainer when the US imposed higher duties on Chinese goods during US President Donald Trump's first tenure.
The agreement, which will be reviewed at the end of five years, will boost profitability of the steel firms who had been buying expensive LNG or naphtha to meet feedstock shortage at their plants, a senior official said. The ministry of petroleum and natural gas had last week asked Reliance to sell natural gas to steel firms like Essar, Ispat and Vikarm Ispat to help the nation's most prolific gas field to produce at optimum level.
Veerappa Moily's allegation that an import lobby was against an increase in gas prices has found no takers among sectoral experts.
Reliance currently holds 90 per cent interest in KG-D6.
The Delhi high court (HC) division Bench on Thursday sought a response from Reliance Industries (RIL) and others regarding the government's appeal against the Mukesh Ambani-owned conglomerate and others for fraudulently and unjustly enriching themselves by draining gas from their deposits, amounting to over $1.5 billion. The Centre had appealed against the single-judge Bench order of the Delhi HC on May 9, which had dismissed its petition. Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani had upheld the international arbitration award of July 24, 2018, in favour of the RIL-led consortium. The consortium includes UK-based BP Plc and Niko Resources of Canada.
Govt was vary of giving BJP-leader and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi any kind of advantage on the eve of elections in the state.
ONGC confirmed on discovering natural gas in KG basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast and Mahanadi basin off Orissa coast, but said the find in KG basin posts 'technological challenges' and it was on looking for a strategic partner.
'Trump does have a master plan in mind to put pressure on India with the additional tariff of 25 per cent to get Modi to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to freeze the Ukraine war.' 'It has not worked so far. By end-September only we'll know for sure the future trajectory of India's oil purchases from Russia,' observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Directorate General of Hydrocarbons Director General Rajiv Nayan Choubey did not take calls made for comments.
According to a source close to the development, the government is set to come out with a notification in this regard by the end of this week.
The petroleum and natural gas ministry has asked the Planning Commission to constitute a committee to suggest a mechanism to average out prices of imported and domestic gas--a move expected to make gas prices uniform for consumers.
A bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam sought response from the Centre and RIL on a PIL filed by Communist Party of India Member of Parliament Gurudas Dasgupta who alleged that no due diligence was done by the government while increasing the price of natural gas.
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, scheduled to meet on June 22, could take a call on ending uncertainty on taxing foreign airlines and shippers as regards certain services, a senior official in the know told Business Standard. He said the Council was expected to decide on exempting the services in question from GST - aircraft lease rentals, maintenance, crew salaries, etc. These services are provided by foreign airlines to their Indian operations.
The Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas in a report tabled in Parliament said the proposed formula is a simple average of two methodologies -- price of imports of LNG into India by different suppliers, and weighted average of prices of natural gas prevailing at Henry Hub in USA, National Balancing Point in London and netback import price at the well head of suppliers into Japan.
Board would start selling the bid documents on November 22.
Gail India subsidiary Mahanagar Gas (MGL) on Friday announced a steep reduction in the retail price of compressed natural gas (CNG) by Rs 8/kg and domestic PNG (piped natural gas) by Rs 5/SCM across its licenced area. The move comes on the heels of the Centre revising the pricing methodology of domestically-produced natural gas on Thursday as proposed by the Kirit Parikh committee and following it with the new price announcement earlier in the day. In February, the city gas distributor reduced its CNG price by Rs 2.5/kg but prices are still around 80 per cent more than those in April last.
ONGC Chairman and Managing Director R S Sharma on July 30 wrote to Petroleum Secretary M S Srinivasan seeking immediate hike in price of gas it sells under regulated regime as it was incurring Rs 700 crore (Rs 7 billion) loss on the business.
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