Anil Ambani meets top government officials after HC ruling
19 Jun 2009
Not giving way to complacency after the Bombay High Court ruling in his favour on the gas supply dispute with his brother, Anil Ambani was on Thursday dashing from Mumbai to New Delhi and back to consolidate his position with the powers that be.
The high court earlier this week upheld a 2005 agreement that allows Reliance Natural Resources Ltd, an Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company, to get 28 mmscmd of gas from brother Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd at a rate that is 44 per cent less than that mandated by the government.
RIL, reports said, is likely move the Supreme Court against the HC ruling.
Anil Ambani is reported to have met petroleum minister Murli Deora in Mumbai and then dashed to Delhi to meet petroleum secretary R S Pandey. Senior officials in ADAG group said that the meetings were a part of his routine schedule. Government officials too declined to divulge any details of the meetings.
At the same time, complying with the high court directive, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas has directed RIL to make additional allocation of natural gas from its Krishna-Godavari basin operation to nine power companies from the surplus made available because of little or no utilisation by fertiliser units.
Even before the general election, a cabinet committee headed by the then all-purpose minister Pranab Mukherjee had mandated that fertiliser units must be given top priority for RIL gas. But fertiliser units seem to have spurned the government's generosity.
Among the companies that will now benefit are Anil Ambani's Reliance Infrastructure, Gautami Power, GVK Industries, Lanco Kondapalli Power, Torrent Power, Gujarat Paguthan Energy, Vemagiri Power and Maharashtra State Power Generation Co.
RIL had, in April, signed gas sales and purchase agreements (GSPAs) with these nine customers in the power sector for approximately 11 million mmscmd at 11 different power generation facilities.
