New Delhi, July 26: India’s billionaire Ambani brothers are at loggerheads again — this time over a rich gas field — and the row has taken a political twist with the government intervening in the bitter dispute.
At stake is the price at which tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will sell gas from an offshore block in the vast Krishna-Godavari basin to a company owned by his younger brother Anil Ambani.
The seeds of the latest battle between two of India’s biggest corporate names lie in a deal carving up the Reliance empire after the 2002 death of their wheeler-dealer father Dhirubhai Ambani, who left no will.
In that family pact in 2005, Mukesh Ambani agreed to sell 28 million cubic meters of gas per day to his brother’s company Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) at 2.34 dollars per million British thermal unit (mBtu) for 17 years.
Later, Mukesh’s Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private company, sought to change the sale price.
It cited a 2007 government order which said gas from the field, one of Asia’s largest fossil fuel finds, can’t be sold below 4.20 dollars per mBtu — 44 percent higher than the price set out in the brothers’ pact.
Anil, who wants a part of the gas for his group’s power plants, won a ruling from the Bombay High Court saying the pact should be upheld.
But now the case is before the Supreme Court and the government, which controls fuel prices, has stepped in, insisting the supply agreement be cancelled.
The government has asked the court to annul the deal on grounds the siblings cannot set a price for the gas, a scarce resource in energy-hungry India.
“We cannot leave the industrial development of the country at their mercy and have contractors of gas fields decide on their own on the utilisation and price of gas,” Pandey said.
But in a court affidavit, Anil’s firm accused the government of “blatantly and openly supporting” RIL’s “unlawful design” to wriggle out of its commitment.
Anil appealed to Premier Manmohan Singh to stop the oil ministry from “overtly and covertly” intervening in the row with his brother’s company, which he accuses of “corporate greed”.
The government says it is only acting in the national interest, calling the “private agreement” a threat to the country’s industrial development.
Mukesh’s RIL has said the agreement between the brothers stipulated that “the supply of gas was subject to availability and approval by the Government.”
The Supreme Court has delayed a hearing on the dispute until September 1. The row is the latest in a series of rancorous battles between the brothers.
They went head-to-head last year over a blockbuster merger deal being negotiated by Anil with South African telecom giant MTN to create an emerging-market telecoms behemoth.
Those talks hit the rocks after Mukesh told MTN he had first right of refusal to buy a controlling stake in Anil’s flagship Reliance Communications.
The brothers appeared to work well together when their father was alive but relations soured after they inherited the oil-to-communications empire.
The discord between Mukesh and Anil came to a head in 2004 after Mukesh had the RIL board pass a motion telling all directors, including Anil, to report to him, saying it was his father’s wish.
Anil fought back in what turned into a mud-slinging corporate soap opera.
The only thing the brothers agreed on was their reverence for the Ambani family matriarch Kokilaben and they asked her to broker a division of the Reliance conglomerate.
Mukesh kept the oil, gas and petrochemicals businesses of the group flagship Reliance Industries. Anil got Reliance Energy, one of India’s biggest power utility firms, the phone company and finance arm Reliance Capital.
But the deal did not bring harmony.
In fact, observers say, the last time the US-educated brothers seemed truly united, was at their father’s funeral pyre in 2002 where they stood grieving side by side.
–Agencies