As and when the GST comes in, Budget projections will have to be unbundled and revised. In fact, the pragmatic decision would be to present another Budget! This makes the passage of the Finance Bill with its multiple unrelated amendments seem even more dubious, says Devangshu Datta.
Oil regulator PNGRB has approved the tariff that billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned East-West pipeline will charge for transporting gas from fields off the east coast to users.
Clearing the last hurdle, the Union home ministry has given unconditional approval for United Kingdom's BP to buy a 30 per cent stake in Reliance Industries' oil and gas blocks, including the showcase KG-D6 gas fields, for $7.2 billion.
In a written reply to a question, he said commercial production of oil from Reliance KG-DWN-98/3 block or KG-D6 commenced in September at the rate of 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Reliance and its Canadian partner Niko Resources has established 570 million tons of oil and oil equivalent gas reserves in the block.
Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani-led RIL was the top private sector company from the country as it jumped from 203rd rank last year to 148th.
Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, speaking on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address, charged the government with not delivering on its various promises, including generating two crore jobs per year.
It added this wasn't aimed at benefiting Reliance Industries Ltd alone.
NTPC has taken RIL to court seeking performance of a bid by the Mukesh Ambani firm to supply 12 million standard cubic meters per day of gas to its Kawas and Gandhar expansion projects at $2.34 per mmBtu. However, the oil ministry has opposed the same price in case of supplies to be made to Anil Ambani Group firm RNRL on the basis of a private family agreement.
Petrol and diesel are among the 90-plus commodities that have been approved by the government for derivatives trading
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.
'We began foolishly bragging about Saudi-Emirati investment plans as indicative of the sheikhs 'distancing' from Pakistan, including on Kashmir,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The government is unlikely to ban export of petroleum products or review the export-oriented status of Reliance Industries Jamnagar refinery, as has been demanded by United Progressive Alliance government's new ally, the Samajwadi Party.
With the government making a distinction between the privately-run Reliance Natural Resources Ltd and the government-run NTPC Ltd in relation with the gas dispute with Reliance Industries Ltd, the ministry of power is likely to take up NTPC's case with the Empowered Group of Ministers.
State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) may have won a large oil block in Venezuela but the Petroleum Ministry wants Reliance Industries to join the project to give stability to the venture.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, research, Religare Broking, answers your stockmarket queries.
RIL said it had launched 'an internal probe' into its staff's detention.
An Anil Ambani group company has asked the oil ministry to stop Reliance Industries Ltd from charging marketing margin on gas, alleging that the Mukesh Ambani-led firm was not sharing the revenue and 'diverting' crores (billion) of rupees of the government's share.
A day after Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to forestall political attempts to throttle his oil refinery business, the petroleum ministry has come out with a detailed presentation to show that the demand for the windfall profits tax (WPT) on private oil companies is 'short-sighted populism' and 'bad economics.'
Anil Ambani's Reliance Natural Resources continued its attack on the government for allegedly favouring brother Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd on the sale price of gas from the Krishna Godavari D6 basin. At $4.2 per million British thermal unit (mBtu), the price fixed, there is a premium of more than 100 per cent over the gas available through the administered pricing mechanism, it said.
A friend of Mukesh Ambani should not be petroleum minister
Amidst the legal battle between Reliance Industries Ltd and Reliance Natural Resources Ltd over gas from Kaveri basin, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora has hit out at the Ambani brothers for fighting over a natural resource that belongs to the government and the people of the country.
Billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani has turned a venture capitalist and is backing a new television channel Epic TV due to go on air next month.
RIL president and CEO (Oil and Gas) PMS Prasad, who met petroleum ministry officials to discuss under capacity production from the company's KG basin fields, said: "We have time till July 15 to decide. . . we are still evaluating our options."
The newly set up Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has received over 100 applications from domestic and foreign companies interested in supplying gas to domestic households and vehicles in cities.
Now that the Bombay High Court has rejected the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas' (MoPNG) attempts to help Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) wriggle out of its 2005 contract to supply 28 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas to Anil Ambani's Reliance Natural Resources Limited (RNRL), the pressure on it has increased several times over.
Shell India is the second private sector petroleum company to review its expansion plans in India. The company has decided not to open any more petroleum outlets. The company has also asked some of its employees to start looking for another job. Shell has 50 petrol pumps across the country and has a licence to open 2,000 pumps.
Reliance Industries Ltd will sell 4.3 million tonnes of petroleum products from its 33 million tonnes Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat to public sector oil retailing companies in 2004-05.
Reliance Industries, India's largest company by market capitalisation, and GAIL India, the largest transporter and marketer of gas, have sought licences to sell natural gas to households and vehicles across 60 cities in India.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd, which is engaged in the textile business apart from petroleum, has approached the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks for a process patent to make thermoplastic polyester. RIL filed an application in this regard in March this year and the approving authorities have published the claims made by the company in their latest Patent Office Journal, giving public notice.
Downstream oil sector regulator Petroleum & Natural Gas Regulatory Board had been pushing for cancellation of the authorisation given to RGTIL.
Industrialist Anil Ambani on Tuesday dared the petroleum ministry to take back the ownership of gas fields from Reliance Industries Ltd if it seriously believed that terms of the contract were violated by Mukesh Ambani-led firm, which he alleged was wanting to make a super-profit of Rs 50,000 crore (Rs 500 billion).
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.
Companies such as ONGC and Reliance have not been able to meet their work commitments for the blocks they had won under the New Exploration Licensing Policy rounds because of a crunch in availability of deep-sea drilling rigs. The official said oil ministry is moving a note for the consideration of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for giving a drilling holiday from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2010, for 33 blocks awarded in the fifth round of NELP.
Shah said India's goal is to become a $ 5 trillion economy in the next five years and without contribution from the energy and petroleum sector, this goal can't be achieved.
Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Natural Resources has filed an affidavit in the Bombay High Court in the case involving Reliance Industries, refuting the petroleum ministry's stand that the government-approved price of $4.2/million metric British thermal unit (mmBtu) is the selling price of gas.
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