Committee Shoots Down Gas Price Pooling Plan

摘要

In a blow to anxious prospective buyers, an inter-ministerial committee has rejected the proposal of pooling of domestic natural gas prices with imported LNG. Power, steel and petrochemical projects that were banking on the supply of pooled gas are set to become unviable. As per the pooling plan, an average price of domestic and imported fuel is calculated to determine the selling price. Domestic gas prices, including those sold by Reliance Industries from its D6 block in the Krishna Godavari Basin off the Bay of Bengal, are at $4.2 to $5.5 per million metric British Thermal unit, or mmBtu (excluding transportation charges and taxes). That's much lower than imported LNG, which is available at $10-$14 per mmBtu.