Public sector undertaking Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) kept its shareholders in the dark after winning a large-amount court case against Reliance Industries Limited, according to sources.
ONGC won a case against RIL on February 14, 2025, in the Delhi High Court in the 2018 KGD6 gas dispute.
As per the court ruling, ONGC is entitled to recover between Rs 20,000 crore and Rs 25,000 crore (including interest).
As per Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) rules, the state-run PSU is supposed to disclose such material, price-sensitive information to its shareholders. But neither ONGC nor the central government has issued any statement regarding the development.
ONGC didn’t make any disclosure to BSE or NSE.
ONGC-RIL KGD6 Gas Dispute Case
On February 14, a division bench of Justice Rekha Palli and Justice Saurabh Banerjee overturned an earlier single bench ruling in the KGD6 gas dispute case.
In May 2023, the bench had upheld the Arbitration Award in RIL’s favour.
However, the division bench found ‘patent illegality’ in the Arbitral Award.
The bench deemed sufficient grounds to interfere with the earlier decision under Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act.
The government had accused RIL and its foreign partners — UK-based BP and Canada’s Niko Resources — of committing an ‘insidious fraud’ and ‘unjust enrichment of over $1.729 billion’ by siphoning gas from the deposits the company had no right to exploit.
“We are setting aside the impugned order of May 9, 2023, passed by the single judge, and the arbitral award passed by the arbitral tribunal on July 24, 2018, as they are contrary to the settled position of law,” the division bench said in its judgment.
The bench further said that the award ‘strikes at the heart of public policy’ and had ‘given a premium to a contractor that amassed vast wealth by committing an insidious fraud as well as a criminal offense”.
What was the matter?
The government accused RIL of committing ‘fraud’ and “unjust enrichment” by draining and selling gas that had migrated from ONGC blocks — Godavari PML and KGDWN-98/2 — to RIL’s blocks.
After this, the government, in November 2016, had raised a demand of $1.55 billion, plus interest, and an additional $175 million toward revised cumulative profit petroleum.
Attorney General R Venkataramani and senior counsel KK Venugopal, representing the government, argued that RIL had known about the connectivity of its and ONGC’s blocks since 2003.
A day after the division bench’s ruling in favour of ONGC, RIL issued a statement to its shareholders, reading: “After analysing the judgment, the company will file an appeal before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.”
Even after that, ONGC and the central government made no disclosure about the case victory to ONGC’s shareholders.
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