Mumbai, June 15 (IANS) Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) will get assured gas supply of 28 million metric standard cubic metre per day (mmscmd) from the Krishna-Godavari hydrocarbon basin for 17 years, the Bombay High Court ruled Monday.
The court also fixed the price at $2.34 per million British thermal unit (mBtu).

A division bench of Justices J.N. Patel and K.K. Tated said the gas would be used only for power generation and not trading.

Directing the Mukesh Ambani-headed Reliance Industries (RIL) to arrive at an arrangement along these lines within a month, the court also said the Ambani brothers may consult their mother if there was any difficulty at arriving at an agreement.

RNRL had approached the court after RIL refused to supply gas at $2.34 per mbtu from the Krishna-Godavari basin.

RNRL had claimed at least half of the 80 million standard cubic metres of gas per day that is envisaged from the fields off the Andhra Pradesh coast - said to be the country’s biggest source of hydrocarbons today.

Last September, RNRL counsel Ram Jethmalani had told the court that Anil Ambani was willing to meet Mukesh Ambani any time to resolve the dispute and that he was open to mediation by their mother Kokilaben Ambani.

Jethmalani had also told the court that the Anil Ambani group’s power plants would come up in three years if it got a bankable agreement of supply from RIL. “Once the plants come up, RNRL will use gas only for power generation,” he had said.

In an interim order last year, the court had restrained RIL from entering into contracts to sell the gas from the basin - known officially as KG-D6 gas - with companies other than RNRL and the state-run National Thermal Power Corp (NTPC).