New Delhi, August 25: Reliance Industries has hit back at the Anil Ambani group for unleashing a “malicious, mischievous, baseless and ill-informed” propaganda against its gas field costs and said the campaign by people with little experience of large projects should be nipped in the bud.
RIL said capital expenditure for KG-D6 fields increased from USD 2.47 billion in 2003 to USD 8.83 billion due to a 2.5 times increase in reserves, trebling of production facilities, doubling of peak production, hike in number of wells, field life and inflation in equipment and services industry.
Its President and CEO (Petroleum) PMS Prasad on August 20 wrote to Oil Secretary R S Pandey, saying “certain parties are bent upon holding the country’s price and national interest hostage to their own narrow commercial interests and are stopping at nothing to destroy the reputation of the country.”
“It is necessary to nip these malafide endeavours in the bud for the sake of the energy security of the country,” wrote Prasad and was a day later appointed to the board of RIL.
Without naming ADAG, he said the “unprovoked and unjustified attack on the credibility of the project” was being carried out by “vested interests having little understanding of any mega project execution, leave alone complex deepwater projects.”
Comparing with similar deepwater projects by world’s top energy majors, Prasad said KG-D6’s finding and development cost of less than USD 5 per barrel of oil equivalent was among the lowest in the world.
—Agencies