ONGC-Reliance dispute: A.P. Shah panel to submit report on Wednesday

New Delhi: The justice A.P. Shah Committee looking into the dispute between state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) regarding the flow of gas between their adjacent fields in the Krishna-Godavari basin will submit its report to oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday, said a person privy to the development.

The oil ministry will take a call on when to make the contents of the report public, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

ONGC claims that RIL has benefited from gas flow between their adjacent fields during the 2009-13 period.

RIL has been maintaining that it has drilled wells only within its block, as approved by the regulatory authority, and was not guilty of any wrongdoing.

The committee was set up on 15 December, as ordered by the Delhi high court after hearing ONGC’s petition alleging that the RIL consortium was benefitting from the gas flow.

The committee is mandated to “quantify unfair enrichment if any” by RIL and to recommend ways to compensate ONGC and the government after independent American consultant DeGoyler and MacNaughton (D&M) reported that the fields managed by the two companies shared the same reservoir, leading to migration of gas from ONGC’s field to RIL’s.

Both the companies are now in the process of developing other discoveries in the Krishna Godavari basin taking advantage of the new gas pricing policy, which seeks to enhance domestic natural gas production and help in veering the economy towards the cleaner fuel.

The new pricing formula announced by the government on 10 March allows producers to sell gas from hard-to-reach areas at a price linked to select imported alternative fuels such as fuel oil, naphtha and coal.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC)