CAG says RIL’s gas price hiked

New Delhi: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has pulled up Reliance Industries for charging a rate in excess of the government approved price for its KG-D6 gas field and not including the marketing margin for calculating royalties and government’s share.

The government had in October 2007 set a sale price of $4.20 per million British thermal unit based on the price discovered by RIL from key customers. The CAG in a draft report of audit of RIL’s eastern offshore KG-D6 block spendings stated that the company charged $4.205 per mmBtu from consumers, leading to excess billing of $9.68 million.

“As per the price discovery process undertaken by the operator (RIL), it was categorically indicated that selling price would be rounded off to two decimal points. A review of records relating to sales of gas to consumers, however, reve-aled that the operator has been charging the gas price at the rate of $4.205 per mmBtu (three decimal points) from its consumers in place of $4.20 per mmBtu, arrived at after rounding of 2 decimal points,” CAG said. This lead to an excess billing of $9.68 million in first four years of production beginning 2009-10.On top of this sale price, RIL charged a marketing margin of $0.135 per mmBtu to cover for its marketing risks.

“It has also been noticed that while computing the profit petroleum (government’s share of production) and royalty, the operator is considering the price of $4.205 per mmBtu instead of $4.34 being charged by him from the consumers, as the revenue earned though marketing margin is not being treated as revenue for the purpose of calculating cost recovery, profit petroleum and royalty,” CAG said.