Mumbai: Private fuel retailers Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Essar Oil Ltd have captured 3% of the local market in the last one year since diesel prices were freed from government control.

It is similar to the rate at which these companies expanded their presence in the fuel-retailing business between 2002 and 2005, when they cornered almost 12-13% of the market over three years. After that, most private fuel retailers exited the market since subsidies on products such as diesel made it unviable to compete against state-owned firms.

The Indian equity markets are still soaring high, after a gap-up opening, mainly on the back of short-covering and strength witnessed in global peers. The broad based rally across the banking and auto shares lifted the sentiment.

Overnight, the Wall Street jumped euphorically post the released of US Federal Reserve’s meeting minutes that hinted at raising the interest rates in December as it feels confident about the health of the world’s largest economy.

New Delhi: Reserving his verdict in the dispute between Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and the Union government over appointment of a third arbitrator in the KG Basin case, Justice Ranjan Gogoi of the Supreme Court on Monday said further appointments will be on hold until there is clarity on what the appropriate forum to hear the case is.

“The whole matter to be decided now is which will be the forum to hear the case,” Gogoi said, adding, “In light of the... ordinance, orders are reserved.”

While deregulation of fuel prices had led to a gradual re-opening of retail outlets by dealers of Reliance Industries (RIL), a closure of several of these could again be in the offing.

In the past six-odd months, almost 1,000 RIL dealerships had reopened retail outlets (ROs); there had been 1,400 filling stations at one time and all had to close. However, uncompetitive commissions by RIL on petrol and diesel sales has meant dealers making losses, of Rs 25,000-30,000 a month, they allege. They're asking for a rise in the commission to match those given by government-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs).

Niko Resources of Canada has decided to quit Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL)'s gas discovery block NEC-25, off the Odisha coast.

The company, in a statement, said,"the second quarter of financial year 2016, the company elected to withdraw from the NEC-25 block and relinquish its interest to the remaining interest holders." RIL is the operator of the block, with 60 per cent interest, while BP plc of UK has the remaining 30 per cent stake.

The less-than-anticipated gas production from Reliance Industries' flagship KG-D6 fields may have impacted fortunes of a number of its customers, but the company and its two partners have made almost two dozen interventions to arrest the decline from D1 and D3 discoveries. RIL, British Petroleum (BP) and Niko have together invested Rs 4,500 crore in the past two years to sustain production, said a person close to the development.

Reliance Industries has regained the top slot among Indian energy companies on the Platts global list by surpassing state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) in the rankings for this year.

In all, 14 Indian energy companies made it to the 2015 Platts Top 250 Global Energy Company Rankings, a financial performance roster of publicly traded companies with assets greater than USD 5 billion.

Reliance Industries today became the first corporate to sign the revised listing agreement with the BSE as mandated under the newly introduced Listing Regulation notified by SEBI.

Earlier, the listing agreement was a bilateral agreement between the stock exchange and the company and market regulatory SEBI didn't have regulations on this. Thus each company's agreement with stock exchange could be at variance and lacking the full force of SEBI's rigour.

Boosted by a rally in stocks, the total market valuation of listed companies at the BSE regained the Rs 100 lakh-crore mark on Monday. The total market capitalisation (m-cap) of BSE-listed companies stood at Rs 1,00,36,165 crore at the end of trade on Monday. Investor wealth of BSE-listed firms, measured by market capitalisation, had crashed below Rs 100 lakh crore on August 24, when the Sensex plunged by 1,624.51 points. The benchmark BSE Sensex on Monday soared 150.32 points to settle at 27,364.92, continuing its winning spree for the third straight session. The index has now gained over 585 points in the past three sessions.

"Markets started the week on a positive note on the back of strong quarterly corporate earnings, mainly led by index heavyweight Reliance Industries," said Gaurav Jain, Director, Hem Securities.

In the last few years, litigation between India's largest company, Reliance Industries, and the Indian government and public sector companies has increased, putting at risk investments worth billions of dollars on all sides.

RIL - which seldom took on the government in the past - is doing just that over gas pricing. The government has accused RIL of gold plating its expenditure over Krishna Godavari gas extraction, thereby reducing the government's share of profits.

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