New Delhi: The Delhi High Court issued a notice to the Centre and Reliance Industries on a plea filed by state owned ONGC accusing Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries of exploiting substantial gas from its natural gas block on Friday.
Justice Manmohan asked for a response from the oil ministry, directorate general of hydrocarbons and RIL for May 29.
The plea has claimed that the company exploiting gas from its natural gas block in Krishna-Godavri basin.
It also claimed that the company has taken out gas running into approximately 18 billion cubic metres quantity between the years 2009 to September 2013 and continues to do so even till date from the combined gas reserves of ONGC and RIL.
“The present petition is necessitated in view of bona fide belief on the part of ONGC, based on the seismic data made available by RIL very recently in 2013-14 which suggest that while exploiting its own block and operating four wells for that purpose, RIL has exploited not only natural gas within its block but has exploited substantial natural gas from the blocks in the control of ONGC," said the plea.
The plea said that the actions are clearly illegal and amounts to virtually taking away the property belonging to ONGC and therefore the nation. It said RIL is bound to compensate the ONGC and these actions are not only illegal but have violated the constitutional provisions.
