Reliance Industries Ltd.

Reliance Industries (RIL) is holding back the development of its coal-bed methane (CBM) blocks in Madhya Pradesh. The company has put the development on hold because it wants the government to first decide on the pricing of the gas produced there.

RIL has pegged the price at around $13 per one million British thermal unit (mBtu) for the coal-bed methane and has already submitted a price formula to the oil ministry. The company has asked the government’s approval and it is been more than two months they are yet to hear about the same. In comparison, the government has fixed the price of gas produced from the company’s KG-D6 block at $4.2 per mBtu.

Recently, RIL’s gas output from its eastern offshore KG-D6 gas fields had dropped to a fresh all-time low of 39.80 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd). Reliance holds 60 percent interest in KG-D6, while UK's BP Plc holds 30 per cent and Niko Resources of Canada holds the remaining 10 percent.