State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has sought more than doubling of natural gas prices to help bring significant discoveries in KG basin and Gulf of Kutch to production. Gas discoveries in shallow sea off Andhra Pradesh on the east, and off Gujarat on the west are economically unviable to produce at the current government-mandated price of $2.89 per million British thermal unit, a senior company official said.
The company wants a price of over $6 per mmBtu to help it produce the gas without suffering any losses. In the absence of a viable gas price, it will have to mothball the $1.5-billion projects, he added. “We have made representation to the government that the current price is not enough to make the discoveries viable. We have sought special pricing dispensation,” he said.