New Delhi: GAIL India has won the rights to market the gas jointly produced by Reliance Industries, British Gas and ONGC from the Panna-Mukta-Tapti fields, a move that will boost revenues of the company by over Rs 5,000 crore.

The Oil Ministry, after three meetings with GAIL and the PMT consortium, decided to nominate for life the state-run firm to market the gas, sources said.

GAIL currently delivers about five million standard cubic meters per day of gas from the fields lying in western offshore and is not entitled to marketing margin. The government has now allowed the company to charge a marketing margin of $0.12 per million British thermal unit on the entire output of about 17 mmscmd from April 2008.

Since 2006-07,GAIL gets about 5 mmscmd of PMT gas at 4.75 dollars per mBtu. Reliance-BG-ONGC sell 4.8 mmscmd at $3.96 per mBtu (some of it to themselves) and another 6.5 mmscmd at rates ranging from $4.6 to $5.7 per mBtu.

The sources said GAIL will get the entire PMT output at $5.7 per mBtu, a move that will also boost revenues of BG Group of UK, Reliance and Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC). For GAIL, the market margin would fetch a net income of about Rs 112 crore and transportation tariff would add another Rs 450 crore annually.

When contacted, GAIL Chairman and Managing Director U D Choubey declined to comment.

In 2005-06, GAIL under P Banerjee had lost out of marketing rights of PMT gas when the government allowed Reliance, BG (who own 30 per cent stake each in the fields) and ONGC (which has the remaining 40 per cent) to market the gas.

Source : PTI