The Justice AP Shah committee, which submitted its report to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Wednesday, has confirmed gas migration from ONGC’s east coast block in the Krishna Godavari basin to the Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries Ltd.
The single-member committee had been constituted by the Ministry after American consultant DeGoyler and MacNaughton (D&M) had said in its findings that there had been gas migration from ONGC to RIL.
The Shah committee was mandated to to look into the legal, financial and contractual provisions, suggest a future course of action and also ‘quantify the unfair enrichment’ on account of gas migration.
ONGC and RIL have been locked in a dispute wherein the public sector company accused the Mukesh Ambani-promoted firm of pumping out natural gas from its adjacent fields in the Krishna Godavari basin.
An independent consultant, D&M, was appointed by the Delhi High Court to look into the matter, based on which the Ministry was asked to take appropriate action. D&M’s report, submitted to the Ministry in October 2015, was referred to the Justice Shah Committee.
The D&M report had found that as much as 15 per cent of the gas pumped out by RIL and its partners Niko Resources and BP Plc from their block in the Krishna Godavari basin could belong to ONGC. The D&M report had also confirmed ‘reservoir continuity’ — in other words, the absence of any barriers between the blocks of the two parties.