Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) today told the Bombay High Court that Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) headed by Mr Anil Ambani wants gas to ‘trade in’ as it does not have a power plant requiring natural gas as of now.
Mr Harish Salve, counsel for RIL, said this during the course of his argument against the interim order of the Court restraining RIL from selling gas to any third party other than RNRL and NTPC.
He based it on the fact that RNRL doesn’t have a single gas-based power project at the moment.
The Bombay High Court’s interim order restraining RIL was passed on June 20.
RIL filed an appeal against this order, which came up for hearing today.
Mr Salve argued that the interim order was obtained by RNRL with mala fide intentions.
“On one hand, RNRL says that the Government should buy all the gas and on the other, they move the Court and obtain an order saying that the gas should not be sold to a third party,” Mr Salve said.
Representing RNRL, Mr Mukul Rohatgi said that the company has received land and environmental clearance for its 8,000 MW gas-based power plant at Dadri (Uttar Pradesh), which requires Rs 40,000-crore investment.
“Unless the power plant has a firm commitment from RIL for gas, how can the project go ahead?”
Mr Salve contended that as per the demerger agreement between the Ambani brothers, RIL was supposed to provide gas for RNRL’s power project or that of its subsidiaries, but the Anil Ambani group now wants gas for any company in which it has stake as less as one per cent.
The latest appeal arose out of an earlier order by the Court, which ruled that RIL shall not enter into any gas supply agreement with any third party of the gas committed to it under a scheme of demerger sanctioned by the High Court involving the company’s oil, petrochemicals and telecom businesses.
The Court had then held that it was yet to rule on RNRL’s contention that the gas supply master agreement created a binding obligation on RIL to supply a certain stipulated quantity to RNRL.
The agreement placed on RIL an eventual claim for supply of gas to the tune of 81.6 MMSCMD.
The Court observed that based on the detail of production programme submitted by RIL to various authorities, the peak production expected to be reached by 2016 would be only 80 MMSCMD.
In the event, the Court felt that not restraining RIL from entering into contracts for the sale of any portion of the gas to be produced would unnecessarily precipitate matters when the Court was yet to rule on the validity of the main supply agreement.
The Division Bench of Mr Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Ms Justice Ranjana Desai, hearing the case, adjourned the matter to July 12.
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