Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries’ (RIL) lawyer today told the Bombay High Court that the company had not signed an MoU with Anil Ambani’s group firm Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL) for gas supply.
The MoU says the gas supply agreement is with Reliance Energy and for the Dadri power project, senior counsel Harish Salve representing RIL said. “Nowhere does it say that the gas will go to RNRL,” Salve told the division bench of justices J N Patel and K K Tated.
He said, “28 mmscmd of gas is specific for Reliance Energy at NTPC price.” REL and RNRL are both Anil Ambani group companies. State-run NTPC too has filed a separate suit against RIL, seeking that the Mukesh Ambani company execute the contract of gas supply. RIL has denied that the contract with NTPC was formalised.
The high court is hearing a dispute between RIL and RNRL over supply of gas from the former’s eastern offshore Krishna Godavari D6 field to the latter.
Salve alleged that RNRL had “changed key expressions in the MoU and excluded them from court submissions”.
He said in the MoU for gas supply, RNRL had replaced ‘REL’ with ‘ADAG’ (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group), because it wanted to “trade” the gas and make profits. “We offered to sign an agreement with the Dadri power plant,” he said, adding RIL had “never refused the Dadri project a bankable agreement”.
RIL is to start pumping gas from the KG-D6 field from next month and will produce 60 million standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) by year-end.
Salve said under the Draft Supply Agreement, 12 mmscmd of D6 gas would first go to NTPC. While Reliance Energy would get the next tranche of 28 mmscmd, the remaining 20 mmscmd would be used by RIL for its captive consumption.
