RIL asks EC to reconsider order on deferring gas price hike

Reliance Industries has written to the poll watchdog asking it to reconsider the directive as the decision to raise rates was taken months before polls were declared and even the Supreme Court has not stayed the move.

RIL Group president V Balasubramanian on April 2 wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner VS Sampath saying the revision of its eastern offshore KG-D6 gas price was a contractual necessity as the old rate of $4.2 expired on March 31. To decide on the rate to be effective from April, 2014, the government had in 2012 constituted a committee under Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council chairman C Rangarajan.

Based on the panel’s recommendations, the Cabinet in June approved a new pricing formula. The Cabinet on December 19 again approved the applicability of the formula on KG-D6 fields and the oil ministry notified it on January 10.

“You will appreciate that the said (natural gas pricing) guidelines were notified well before the model code of conduct came into force (in early March),” he wrote.