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Tuesday, 02 December, 2008, 15:40 GMT | more >>

ONGC blasts regulator for share drop



By Upstream staff 

The head of India’s state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has blamed the country’s oil regulator VK Sibal for causing a crash in the company’s shares by publicly rejecting an ONGC gas discovery, according to reports in the Indian media.

ONGC chairman RS Sharma said he had written to the Oil Ministry criticising Sibal’s announcement in the media last month that the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) had disallowed ONGC’s discovery in the Krishna-Godavari basin, a report published by the Times of India this morning said.

The DGH said at the time that ONGC had abandoned the well before doing conventional MDT testing.

ONGC countered that its assessment of over 14 trillion cubic feet of inplace gas reserves was based on an MDT test carried out in presence of a DGH representative.

Sharma said that he sought an independent inquiry into what he called Sibal’s “malicious campaign” against ONGC.

"The blatant bias against ONGC in rejecting discovery of [well] UD-1 is obvious with reference to similar discoveries in adjoining acreages," he said.

Sibal said today he was unaware of the complaint.


Tuesday, 13 March, 2007, 07:06 GMT  | last updated: Tuesday, 13 March, 2007, 07:30 GMT

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