The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to pause proceedings in the KG-basin gas migration dispute after Reliance Industries Limited and two foreign firms urged the bench to halt the hearing pending the outcome of mediation with the Centre. The court said parties may inform it of any mediation outcome but made clear the hearing would continue.
What happened in court
RIL and two unnamed foreign companies told the Supreme Court they intended to write to the Central government seeking mediation in the long-running KG-basin gas migration dispute. On the basis of this, they urged the court to stay the ongoing proceedings until mediation produced a result.
Attorney General R Venkataramani opposed the request, urging the Supreme Court to press on with the hearing rather than yield the floor to a parallel mediation process. The court sided with the Attorney General’s position — declining to halt proceedings while leaving open the channel for parties to report back if mediation advances.
What the KG-basin dispute is about
The KG-basin gas migration dispute centres on allegations that RIL, operating the KG-D6 block off India’s eastern coast under a production sharing contract, extracted gas that had migrated from adjacent blocks operated by state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. The dispute has been among the most consequential and protracted in India’s upstream energy sector, involving questions of contract interpretation, sovereign resource ownership, and the rights of PSC operators versus the state.
The case carries significant implications for how India’s upstream oil and gas contracts are interpreted — and for the broader investment environment in domestic energy exploration at a moment when India is under acute pressure to reduce import dependence given the Iran war-driven surge in oil prices.
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