Govt proposes doubling natural gas price; likely to raise costs for power, fertiliser firms

24 Jan 2013 Evaluate

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) is expected to approve new policy guidelines for the pricing of natural gas based on the Rangarajan committee report, which was submitted recently. If approved it would more-than-double the price of domestic gas sold by the state owned oil companies along with it would also raise costs for power and fertiliser companies and other natural gas buyers such as city gas distributors.

The Rangarajan committee, which recently submitted its report, 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. Further, the Rangarajan formula is the mean of weighted averages of the producer price of liquefied natural gas imports to India and the price prevalent in Europe, the US and Japan.

At current rates, the price was about $7.4. Though domestic gas prices had been aligned to $4.2 fixed for Reliance Industries (RIL)’ KG-D6 gas in 2007, this time, RIL would have to wait till 2014, when its gas price is due for revision. Moreover, the Rangarajan formula is applicable to all natural gas producers, including government companies for nominated fields and private companies. The new price would be uniformly applicable to all consumers.

Though, the existing contracts for domestic companies would remain unaffected till the expiry of the contract period and the new policy would usher in uniformity in pricing. Further, the new policy would also be applicable to coal bed methane and all other non-conventional gas including shale.

In 2011-12, domestic gas output stood at 154 million standard cubic metres a day (mscmd) and for this year, it is expected to fall as RIL is producing less than 25 mscmd. Presently, gas produced from nominated fields is sold at $2.52 a million British thermal units (mBtu) to certain consumers. 

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