Thaindian News

New Delhi, Aug 31 (IANS) The petroleum ministry has approached the Prime Minister’s Office for a ministerial panel for identifying new buyers for additional gas produced by Reliance Industries from the Krishna-Godavari hydrocarbon basin in Andhra Pradesh.
Petroleum Minister Murli Deora Monday said he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reconstitute a new group of ministers and had met with his Principal Secretary T.K.A. Nair Sunday.

“It’s true that I have written to the prime minister seeking the setting up of a new empowered group of ministers on the issue,” Deora told reporters here Monday.

Petroleum Secretary R.S. Pandey has also written to Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar on the issue.

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, framed a gas utilization policy for the Krishna-Godavari basin’s D6 hydrocarbon block in 2008, with special priority to the fertiliser and power plants, up to 40 million units per day.

But the term of the group lapsed with that of the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Under that policy, the 40 million units of gas produced was allocated to plants producing power, fertilizer and cooking gas as well as city gas distribution projects.

According to Deora’s statement in parliament Aug 3, 18 million units were being supplied to power plants.

Production started in April and was scheduled to reach 80 million units within an year.

But Reliance now says it cannot ramp up production further as the government has not allocated the additional gas to be produced.

“There is a need to revive the mechanism so that we can allocate gas beyond these levels to new customers,” said Deora.

Besides, the new panel could also look into the issue of price of the gas, indicated Pandey. “Pricing is now an issue as the EGoM has already set gas price for five years,” he said.

– Indo-Asian News Service

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