Oil Ministry likely to refer gas pricing issue to CCEA or EGoM

16 Jan 2013 Evaluate

The oil ministry is expected to move forward the Rangarajan panel recommendation of mandating a price of about $8-8.5 for natural gas, produced by companies like Reliance Industries (RIL), to Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) or the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on natural gas for approval. The committee appointed by the Prime Minister had recommended pricing of domestically produced natural gas at an average of international hub prices and cost of imported LNG instead of present mechanism of market discovery.

As per the panel, weighted average of the US, Europe and Japanese gas hubs or market price should be averaged with the net imported price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to arrive at sale price of domestically produced gas. For instances, taking last year's publicly available consumption numbers and the existing price of gas in the three markets, the formula suggested by the Rangarajan committee gives $8-8.5 per million British thermal unit as the price of domestic gas, which is more than $4.2-5.73 per mmBtu price currently prevalent in the country.

Acceptance of the recommendations would lead to superseding of provisions in contracts signed by companies like RIL and would also mean government mandating a price of gas and ending the last of the remaining freedoms available. Currently, Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) provide for gas being sold at an arms-length price discovered through market bids invited from potential users. Further, the government has already taken over the task of fixing users curbing marketing freedom guaranteed in PSC.

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