RIL uploads 'stakeholder education video' again

In line with Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL)’s strategy to use social media to fight allegations against it, the company on Friday uploaded the second edition of a video, titled ‘Reliance Gas & Inflation’, on YouTube.

Rubbishing claims the impending gas price increase on April 1 will result in doubling of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices and a rise in the cost of foodgrain, the company said, “A canard is the handiwork of a minuscule section of polity to garner attention they otherwise won’t deserve.”

In the YouTube “stakeholder education video”, Umesh Upadhyay, part of RIL’s corporate communications team and former journalist, says LPG can neither be made, nor is being made from KG-D6 gas. “Gas from these fields contains 99.9 per cent pure methane (natural gas) and does not have any propane and butane, which are used to make LPG. Therefore, there cannot be any correlation between LPG prices and a rise in natural gas prices,” he says. Through the last five years, natural gas prices have been constant, but the price of a 14.2-kg LPG cylinder has increased from Rs 280 to Rs 450, he adds.

The video adds the cost of foodgrain, too, has no co-relation with gas price rise, as trucks, tempos and tractors that transport goods use diesel, not gas. “These people do not want to share the truth; you are being misguided to garner votes,” Upadhyay says, referring to statements by Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal.

Fertiliser firms have expressed apprehension a gas price rise will increase the annual cost of urea production by Rs 10,000 crore.

Gas accounts for about 80 per cent of the production cost of urea. Last year, the government had approved a rise in gas prices---from $4.2/million British thermal units (mBtu) to $8.40/mBtu. This implied an increased subsidy burden on the government, as the government sets urea prices.