Dudley's third visit to India this year comes at a time when the petroleum ministry, at the insistence of the finance ministry, is seeking to deny his company and its partner, RIL, a new gas price, for producing less natural gas than earlier projected.
This punishment is on top of a $1.8-billion penalty already being imposed on them for the same offence. Also, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons is seeking to strip them of eight gas discoveries holding 1.15 trillion cubic feet of reserves worth $14 billion from their eastern offshore KG-D6 block.