MUMBAI :The Centre on Thursday filed a petition challenging a Delhi high court order in favour of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) regarding a gas dispute in the Krishna Godavari Basin.
The court has asked RIL to file a response, a counsel aware of the matter said. A division bench of the Delhi high court has agreed to hear the matter on 12 February.
The dispute began in 2013, when state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) Ltd wrote to the director general of hydrocarbons, alleging there was evidence of ‘lateral continuity’ of gas pools between the Reliance block and the adjacent blocks allocated to ONGC. This meant that the gas pools of the Reliance block and the ONGC blocks appeared to be connected with possible migration of gas between the two blocks.
After an independent consultant verified the claim, the ministry sought $1.55 billion from RIL. The company went for arbitration, resulting in an order favouring it in 2018. In May, while upholding the arbitral tribunal’s 2018 order, an high court bench led by Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani had said: “…the view taken by the arbitral tribunal is most certainly a possible view which calls for no interference.”
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