RNRL's gas business plans shattered

Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL), that was to become the gas marketing arm of the undivided Reliance group, had hoped to get 28 million standard cubic metres a day (mscmd) of gas from the D6 field. With the Supreme Court upholding the government’s right to price and allocate gas, its plan of getting into the gas business appears shattered even before taking off. The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group-controlled company’s current business profile includes oil and gas exploration, where it is yet to make a discovery, and coal mining.

Even if the government allots natural gas to the company from the D6 field, it would be linked to the group’s proposed 7,480-Mw Dadri Power Plant in Uttar Pradesh.

With a gas utilisation policy in place, the government allots gas only for end users except in the case of Indraprastha Gas Ltd, which supplies gas to city gas consumers. A senior RNRL executive had earlier told Business Standard that RNRL could supply natural gas from the D6 field to RIL’s existing customer at the agreed price of $4.2 a million British thermal unit in case it succeeded in getting a favourable judgment.