By IANS,
New Delhi : Left parties’ parliamentarians Sunday asked the government to take over the marketing and distribution of the gas produced by the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries from the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin.
Referring to the dispute between the Ambani brothers over KG basin gas, around 30 MPs from Left parties in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that a “national asset” like gas should not be appropriated as “family property”.
“We urge upon the government to take over the distribution and marketing right of the KG-D6 basin gas at the delivery point so that the same can be distributed and marketed through National Gas Grid under government control,” the letter said.
Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL) can be assigned the role of a nodal agency for this purpose, it added.
The signatories to the letter include Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leaders Sitaram Yechury, Brinda Karat and Basudev Acharia.
The MPs demanded the pricing of gas should be based on “rational and a transparent formulation”.
“As gas is being produced in our own soil, there is absolutely no justification of pricing it on the basis of linkage with international price of an altogether different product like crude oil as has been done at present by making the gas price at $4.32 per million British thermal units (mmbtu),”they said.
“Hence the present gas price determined by the EGoM (empowered group of ministers) must be revised and it should be benchmarked to $2.34 as offered to NTPC by Reliance Industries in 2004-2005.”
At present, there is a dispute between Reliance Industries and the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Natural Resources over gas from the KG basin.