Gas pricing row: SC gives RIL six weeks to respond

Gas pricing row: SC gives RIL six weeks to respond

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Mukesh Ambani's RIL six weeks' time to respond to the CAG report on gas pricing from the KG basin.

The SC also allowed petitioners, including CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta, to file response on government's new guidelines on gas pricing.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had pulled up Reliance Industries for charging a rate in excess of the government approved price for its KG-D6 gas field and not including the marketing margin for calculating royalties and government's share.

The government had in October 2007 set a sale price of $4.20 per million British thermal unit based on the price discovered by RIL from key customers.

The CAG in a draft report of audit of RIL's eastern offshore KG-D6 block spendings stated that the company charged $4.205 per mmBtu from consumers, leading to excess billing of $9.68 million.