The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas will take appropriate action on the natural gas migration dispute between ONGC Ltd and Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries Ltd by September 30.

“I have submitted a comprehensive report, which covers all the terms of reference and also suggests a future course of action,” said Justice A P Shah after submitting the report to Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum and Natural Gas, on Wednesday.

“The report has confirmed gas migration from ONGC’s block to Reliance Industries’ block. We will now study the report in detail and then take appropriate action before September 30,” said Pradhan.

Both Pradhan and Shah remained silent on whether the report has suggested RIL pay compensation to ONGC for the gas migration. “We need more time to study the report,” said Pradhan when asked about the same.

A single-member Justice A P Shah committee was constitued by the Ministry after American consultant DeGoyler and MacNaughton (D&M) in its findings said there was gas migration from ONGC’s east coast block to the adjacent producing asset belonging to RIL.

The terms of reference of the Shah committee were 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 has accused the Mukesh Ambani-promoted firm of pumping out natural gas from its adjacent fields in the Krishna-Godavari basin.

An independent consultant was appointed by the Delhi High Court to look into the matter, based on which the Ministry was asked to take appropriate action. However, the independent consultant D&M’s report was referred to the Justice A P Shah Committee.

The D&M report, submitted to the Ministry in October 2015, 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’ or in other words the absence of any barriers between the blocks of the two parties. The reserves in the D-1 and D-3 fields of the Reliance-BP-Niko KG D6 block total 2.9 trillion cubic feet, of which 2.1 trillion cubic feet has already been extracted.

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