The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said on Thursday that the recommendation of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) permitting Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to fix a “highly inflated” gas price should be rejected in public interest.

“In spite of serious objections raised in and outside Parliament as well as the opposition from the Power and Fertilizer Ministries, the EGOM has reportedly permitted RIL to fix a highly inflated gas price of 4.2 dollar per unit from KG Basin, which is a token reduction from the original price of 4.33 dollar per unit claimed by the company,” the CPM Polit Bureau said in a statement.

Such a high price would severely affect the viability of the consumer industries like power and fertilizer which in turn would hit the common man specially the farming community because of escalation in cost of power and fertilizer, it said.

Maintaining that the RIL formulation for gas price agreed by EGOM was based on the linkage with international price of crude oil and not with the actual cost of producing gas in the country, it said there was no justification for such linkage which was made only to find a route to “artificially inflate” the price for windfall gain of the private company.

“We reiterate that the gas price should be based on the actual cost of production and reasonable profit on the same,” it said.

“The pricing can not be left to the so called market forces based on import parity only to encourage super profit to the investors, who have been given contract under Production Sharing Contract (PSC),” it said.

By virtue of Article 297 of the Constitution, petroleum in its natural state is vested in the Union of India.
Obviously, RIL is just a contractor selling gas, owned by Union of India.

Article 39(b) of the Constitution directs the State that the ownership and control of material resource of the community are so distributed as based to sub-serve the common good.

“Shockingly the Government has also weakened the genuine case of the Government-owned unit, NTPC, which is fighting a legal battle in the High Court of Mumbai against RIL, which was obligated to supply gas from KG Basin at rational price of 2.34 dollar per unit as per International Competitive Bidding in 2004,” the CPM said.