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.

Domestic fliers commuting on major routes will have to shell out as much as R100 more per ticket as the government has decided to impose a levy of up to R8,500 per flight on such routes to fund the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) announced earlier this year.

“The levy for an up to 1,000 km length of scheduled flight will be R7,500 per flight, R8,000 for a 1,000 to 1,500 km flight and R8,500 for flights above 1,500 km,” civil aviation secretary RN Choubey said.

The railways is undertaking a massive drive to boost capacity, which is aimed at providing tickets to people on demand in all premier and express trains, railway minister Suresh Prabhu said on Friday.

The railways will significantly raise capital expenditure in the next financial year from R1,21,000 crore (Budget estimate) in 2016-17, Prabhu said. His ministry also plans to run trains at a speed of 160 km per hour in some of the important routes such as Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah, and to raise the speed of all trains, including goods transporters, Prabhu said, addressing the economic editors’ conference through video-conference.

Facebook’s experiment with semi-anonymous social networking centered around interests, via a standalone app called Rooms, failed. But the learnings from that earlier experiment have now popped up in Facebook’s Messenger application as a new feature called Rooms, which is rolling out now in select markets. The limited launch is meant to serve as a test to see if Facebook’s messaging platform could encourage broader, more public conversations focused on specific topics.

Mumbai: The benchmark Sensex and Nifty slid to their lowest close in nearly four and a half months, mirroring the weakness in Asian shares as concerns that Donald Trump taking over as US President, led to fears of higher interest rates, triggering capital outflows from riskier bets such as emerging markets.

Earlier in the day, BSE’s 30-share Sensex fell as much as 2.69% or 740.50 points to 26,777.18 points, while NSE’s Nifty 50-share dropped 2.82% or 240.80 points to 8,284.95 points. Sensex closed 2.54% or 698.86 points lower at 26,818.82 points, its lowest close since 29 June. Nifty shed 2.69% or 229.45 points to close at 8,296.30 points, its lowest close since 30 June.

Ford is ready with the 2017 EcoSport and will unveil the sub-compact SUV on 14th November, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. The company presently manufactures the EcoSport in India as well as in countries including Thailand, Brazil and Russia. With production expected to start in India, Ford could export the 2017 EcoSport to different parts of the world, especially the USA. The 2017 Ford EcoSport will be based on Ford's global B-car platform, the company's sub-compact car platform, which also underpins the Fiesta, Ka and the B-Max.

KOLKATA: The Big 3 of Indian telecom - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular are slated to collectively see a 40-to-50% growth in mobile wallet transactions following the Modi government's decision to ban high-denomination currency notes, analysts and industry experts said.

The withdrawal of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes announced on Tuesday, they said, is unlikely to immediately translate into a sizeable jump in revenue from wallet services, although it is expected to help retain customers.

Even as long serpentine queues were witnessed at bank branches for the third straight day across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday termed the demonetisation as "Swachhata Abhiyan" and hailed the undaunting spirit of people despite their hardship following its announcement on November 8.

Addressing Indian community in Japan's Kobe before departing for India, PM Modi said, "I salute each and every Indian. Many families had weddings, health problems, they faced inconvenience but they accepted the decision."

Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has expressed reservations about the merger structure in the proposed merger of Max Life Insurance with HDFC Life Insurance.

In a notification to the stock exchanges, Max India on Saturday said that IRDAI has expressed reservations to accept the scheme of amalgamation in its current form.

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.

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