Less than a month after it stopped paying ‘marketing margin’ to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Anil Ambani Group firm Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (R-Infra) has agreed to pay the levy “under protest” and sought natural gas to its power plant when it resumes operations after a maintenance shutdown.
R-Infra on October 7 wrote to RIL saying it was instructing its “bank to effect full payment of the invoice (raised by RIL for supply of KG-D6 field gas to its Samalkot power plant) including the marketing margin element”.
The company, which had paid $0.135 (Rs 6.21) per unit in marketing cost to RIL for over four months without protest, had on September 15 written to RIL that it will no longer pay the “unauthorised and illegal” levy.
R-Infra defaulted on payment of Rs 12 lakh in marketing margin on the 0.56 million standard cubic meters of gas per day (mmscmd) gas supplied to Samalot in the first half of September, leading to RIL sending a notice of suspension of supplies.
“We request you to withdraw the suspension notice dated September 28 and confirm immediate resumption of the supply of gas upon completion of maintenance of power plant,” R-Infra wrote to RIL.
{{/usCountry}}“We request you to withdraw the suspension notice dated September 28 and confirm immediate resumption of the supply of gas upon completion of maintenance of power plant,” R-Infra wrote to RIL.
{{/usCountry}}On the same day, the Anil Ambani group firm also wrote to ministries of power and petroleum informing of the decision and reiterating its position that the levy was “unauthorised and nothing but abuse of its (RIL’s) monopolistic position”.