Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and its partners, BP and Niko Resources, have initiated an arbitration process against the Centre's notice imposing a penalty of $1.55 billion on these companies for allegedly using migrated gas from state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC's) asset in KG-D6.

It was on November 3 that the government had slapped the penalty. Following this, RIL had come out with a statement that the contractor's liability has not been established by any process known to law and the quantification of the purported claim is without any basis and arbitrary.

The penalty imposed on Reliance Industries Ltd for producing Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s share of natural gas has come with an interest rate of 2% over Libor. This has taken the net payable amount to $1.55 billion.

Besides this, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas is seeking $175 million from RIL as additional cumulative profit till March 31, 2016. While giving RIL 30 days to pay up, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas has threatened “further actions” for breach of the provisions and obligations committed under the production sharing contract between the contractors and the government.

The government has sought $1.55 billion (nearly Rs 10311.76 crore) from Reliance Industries and its partners for drawing natural gas belonging to state-owned ONGC in the KG basin over the last seven years.

The Oil Ministry has sent a notice to RIL seeking $1.55 billion compensation, sources privy to the development said.

Following its launch on September 5, and after spending Rs 1.5 lakh crore, Chairman and Managing Director of the Reliance Industries Limited have revealed plans of spending another Rs 1 lakh crore on the Reliance Jio in the next four years for the better expansion of the network. Although, most of the calls in the network are dropped due to PoI and MNP issues, the telecom network which already had added 16 million customers within a month of its launch, have plans of adding at least 100 million customers by the end of a year.

Reliance Industries and its partner Canada's Niko Resources may face an over $1 billion penalty over its dispute with ONGC for the usage of the latter's natural gas.

According to a report in The Financial Express, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons calculated the penalty, which arrived at over $1 billion, after considering the account capital and operational expenditures undertaken by RIL to take out the gas that had migrated to its basin.

Reliance Industries Ltd has raised a term loan of $573 million to partially finance the construction of its six very large ethane ships, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

“RIL has ordered six very large ethane carriers (VLECs), the largest ethane vessels ever built in the world,” the company said in its statement to BSE. “The facilities (loan) with door to door tenor of 12 year comprise of a Korea Trade Insurance Corp (K-sure) insured tranche of $286.5 million and a commercial tranche of $286.5 million," RIL added in the statement.

Reliance Industries (RIL) is expected to continue with its momentum of double-digit gross refining margins (GRMs) for the next few quarters on the back of the winter effect and strong fundamentals, analysts say.

Reliance Industries (RIL) is expected to continue with its momentum of double-digit gross refining margins (GRMs) for the next few quarters on the back of the winter effect and strong fundamentals, analysts say.

Reliance Industries surprised the Street with a record standalone net profit of Rs 7,704 crore for the quarter ending September 2016 (Q2 FY17), 17.9 per cent higher than the Rs 6,534 crore profit after tax (PAT) reported in the same period last year. Bloomberg consensus estimates had pegged the net profit at Rs 7,239 crore on revenue of Rs 58,004 crore. Standalone revenue, too, was ahead of estimates at Rs 64,344 crore.

The petroleum ministry’s technical arm Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) is likely to take into consideration capital and operational expenditure incurred by Reliance Industries (RIL) while computing the penalty being imposed on the firm in regard to its commercial production of gas migrated from state-run ONGC’s 98/2 area to RIL’s KG-D6 block.

Reliance Industries (RIL) is expected to see its gross refining margins (GRM) decline in the September quarter after repeating a seven-year high in the June quarter, even as analysts expect its petrochemical margins to remain healthy and offset the fall in GRMs.

In a Bloomberg poll, five analysts estimated a consolidated net profit of Rs 7,268 crore and revenue of Rs 62,920 crore. In the September 2015 quarter, the company reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 6,720 crore and turnover of Rs 75,117 crore. RIL will announce its financial results for the July-September 2016 quarter on October 20.

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