A joint venture led by Reliance Industries and BG Group has agreed to hand drilling infrastructure from an abandoned gas field to ONGC, their junior partner, helping the state-run group develop a large gas reserve nearby, two company sources said.

Executives from Reliance, BG and ONGC signed an agreement in New Delhi on Tuesday night — providing respite in a months-long battle between the partners over the cost of closing the Tapti field off India's west coast.

The Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Tuesday floated an Expression of Interest (EoI) to develop its oil and gas blocks, including some of the discoveries in the KG-D6 block off the coast of Andhra Pradesh.

RIL is eligible to a higher price for natural gas produced from these discoveries under the new norms if it withdraws arbitration proceedings against the government. RIL currently has four blocks, though development programmes in both the KG-D6 and NEC blocks was on hold, waiting for clarity on the gas price.

The arbitration case involving Reliance Industries (RIL)-BP Plc against the government may see an end, as the companies are said to be considering dropping the case, Mint reported on Monday.

Both the companies are in talks with the government to drop the arbitration, the report added, citing an official from the oil ministry. In fact, they had met oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the first week of April, the newspaper reported.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-headed Union Cabinet on Wednesday is likely to take up a proposal that would overhaul the crude procurement process for government-owned refiners- IOC, BPCL, HPCL and MRPL. The move is aimed to make the refiners more competitive like their private peers such as RIL and Essar Oil and take benefits of spontaneous buying of cargoes.

Sources told FE that the petroleum ministry has sent the final proposal for clearance from the Union Cabinet, which is likely to decide on it on Wednesday.

Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd, the oil to yarn conglomerate launched its online fashion portal Ajio.com with the preview of its collection on Saturday at the ongoing Lakme Fashion week in Mumbai.

The show also saw the company unveiling its campaign ‘Doubt is Out’ with five show stoppers which included actor Sunny Leone, transgender activist, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, comedian, Bharti Singh, yesteryear actor, Helen and Suman Sharma, the first woman to fly the fighter plane MIG-35 as it tried to differentiate.

Private explorer Reliance Industries (RIL) is targeting to start production of coal bed methane (CBM) from its Sohagpur (West) block in Madhya Pradesh during April-June FY17. This would mark the entry of the Mukesh Ambani firm into drilling gas from coal seams, a business that is still lagging behind in the country.

“RIL plans to put on stream the first set of wells between April 8 and April 14,” sources privy to the development told FE. Unlike conventional natural gas, CBM production is tricky and would take about six to eight weeks for the fuel to hit the customer, the source added.

Government has extended by three months the tenure of A P Shah Committee looking into the dispute over natural gas migrating from state-owned ONGC's idle blocks in KG basin to neighbouring fields of Reliance Industries.

The committee has been asked to submit by July 31 its report on "acts of omission and commission" as well as compensation to ONGC, an oil ministry official said.

The government's move to free gas pricing for undeveloped gas fields in difficult areas will not apply to Reliance Industries' KG-D6 finds unless the Mukesh Ambani firm withdraws arbitration challenging the government's authority to decide rates.

The Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had Thursday decided that the marketing freedom subject to a cap based on alternative fuel will not be applicable to discoveries that are under litigation or arbitration.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is set to miss its deadline for re-opening all 1,400 retail fuel outlets by March-end. Till December, the company had 750 operational retail outlets, up from 320 such outlets in April last year.

"We are opening all our outlets one by one. In the next few months, we would be opening the other closed outlets. A lot of infrastructure details have to be looked into before re-opening of these outlets," said a company official.

In a boost to firms like ONGC and Reliance Industries, the government plans to raise natural gas price by about 60% for their undeveloped gas discoveries in difficult areas.

While domestically-produced gas is currently priced at an average of rates in gas-surplus countries like the US, Canada and Russia, for deep-sea discoveries yet to be developed, the government plans to price them at an average cost of alternative fuels -- naphtha and fuel oil as well as imported LNG.

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