Natural gas Agreement with Ambani brothers is to Protect State Resource

India said its intervention in a lawsuit disputing a natural-gas supply agreement between the billionaire Ambani brothers is aimed at protecting a state resource that is to be used according to government policy. Anil Ambani wants to enforce a 2005 agreement requiring Reliance Industries Ltd., controlled by estranged brother Mukesh Ambani, to sell gas from a Bay of Bengal field to his Reliance Natural Resources Ltd. at 44 percent less than the state-set price. Anil’s lawyers have questioned the government’s decision to ask the Supreme Court to scrap the pact that is based on an accord under which the family empire was split. “The family agreement is contrary to the contract signed by Reliance Industries with the government where they agree to abide by the government’s pricing and allocation policy,” Oil Secretary R.S. Pandey, the top bureaucrat in the petroleum ministry, said by telephone in New Delhi yesterday after the Supreme Court adjourned hearings in the case. “The government will protect its property at all costs.”

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