RIL denies theft of ONGC gas

RIL said ONGC approached the company in mid-2012, to examine the possibility of sharing RIL's KG D6 infrastructure

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) on Friday hit out at Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for suing it over the Krishna-Godavari (K-G) gas dispute. It has also denied the claim made by ONGC that the company was stealing gas from ONGC’s K-G gas block off Andhra coast.

In a statement, a RIL spokesperson said it was likely that some elements in ONGC were misleading its new CMD, D K Sarraf, to hide their own failure to develop discoveries made over the last 13 years in these blocks.

ONGC had recently moved Delhi High Court alleging RIL might have drawn natural gas worth thousands of crores of rupees from its fields that sit next to the Mukesh Ambani-run firm's KG-D6 block.

RIL said ONGC had approached it in mid-2012 to examine the possibility of sharing RIL’s KG D6 infrastructure to commercialise some of the discoveries in these blocks, and an memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed the two companies in July last year.

“We continue to see ONGC as a valued industry peer, worthy of collaboration, to whom we will continue to provide assistance to help develop its discoveries and start production of valuable gas locked beneath the Indian Ocean for the benefit of the people of India,” a RIL spokesperson said.

It was only in August last year that ONGC brought the issue of possible connectivity between reservoirs in RIL and ONGC blocks to the notice of RIL through DGH.

Since then, by international practice, ONGC and RIL have been engaged in the process of appointing an independent agency to investigate the issue of possible reservoir connectivity across the blocks. The two had met on May 9 and exchanged drafts regarding the scope of work to be assigned to such agency.

On May 23, the parties again met and finalised the enquiry notice to be sent to four agreed international agencies. It was decided to issue the enquiry notice on May 26. Since the process for appointing this agency as per international practice was already underway it is indeed unfortunate that some elements in ONGC forced invocation of the Delhi High Court at this juncture, the RIL spokesperson said.