RIL moves SC against Delhi HC order in $1.7 billion gas dispute with govt

NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and its overseas companions have moved the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court’s February ruling quashing an arbitral award in their favour in the dispute with the Centre’s $1.7 billion declare over alleged siphoning of gas from a Krishan=Godavari subject off the Andhra coast.RIL filed the lead petition on May 14, whereas its companions BP Exploration (Alpha), a subsidiary of UK’s BP Plc, and Canadian agency Niko Ltd filed comparable petitions individually.The excessive courtroom had on February 14 dominated against RIL and its companions and upheld the federal government’s declare on the bottom of constructing “unjust enrichment” by extracting gas that migrated from state-run ONGC’s block adjoining to the consortium’s KG-D6 subject.The case dates again to 2013 when ONGC claimed its IG and KG-DWN-98/2 blocks adjoining to RIL’s KG-D6 subject shared a standard gas pool. It moved the excessive courtroom, saying RIL, which had already put KG-D6 into operation, was extracting gas that migrated from its blocks that had been nonetheless underneath growth.The oil ministry approached the excessive courtroom after an arbitration panel led by Singapore-based Lawrence Woo struck down its demand for almost $1.6 billion in price, together with curiosity, and $175 million as further cumulative ‘profit petroleum’ payable until March 31, 2016 in direction of “disgorgement of unjust enrichment” made by RIL.In the February 14 order, the division bench of Justices Rekha Palli and Saurabh Banerjee had quashed a global arbitration tribunal’s ruling rejecting the federal government’s declare and overturned an earlier order by justice Anup Jairam Bhambani verdict upholding the arbitral award in favour of the RIL-led consortium.“We are setting aside the impugned order dated May 9, 2023 passed by the learned single judge, and the arbitral award passed by the learned arbitral tribunal dated 2018, being contrary to the settled position of law along the pending applications, if any, leaving the parties to bear their own costs,” the division bench of Justices Palli and Banerjee had stated.In his order, Justice Bhambani had held that,”This court is not persuaded to hold that the conclusions drawn by the arbitral tribunal are such that no reasonable person would reach. Suffice it to say that the view taken by the arbitral tribunal is most certainly a ‘possible view’, which calls for no interference… … this court finds no ground to interfere with the majority arbitral award; which is accordingly upheld”.