Govt yet to confirm Reliance gas estimates

NEW DELHI: Petroluem and natural gas minister Ram Naik told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that the huge gas find of nine trillion cubic feet off the Andhra coast reported by Reliance Industries has not been ascertained yet by the government.
He said that these were estimates made by the Reliance and Niko consortium and that the director-general of hydrocarbons would have to ascertain the find and confirm it.
The minister was replying to a supplementary raised by CPM member Dipankar Mukherjee on whether the government had confirmed the huge claim by the corporates and the extent to which the gas could be commercially exploited.
Mukherjee said since huge funds would be tapped from financial institutions and the market for the project, the government would have to determine the actual position of the gas reserves in the basin. The member also pointed out that a Russian expert had once stated that Kolkata was floating on gas but no one had evinced interest in it.