Effective April 1, the government revised the price of natural gas down to $2.39 a MMBTU, from the earlier $3.23 a MMBTU — a price which natural gas producer and seller, Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC), finds “extremely unviable”.
A week before the government reset the gas price, HOEC wrote to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, requesting that the price be left undisturbed because “any further reduction in gas prices to a level below $3 a MMBTU would render even operating the current gas field extremely unviable for both public and private sector companies.”
Regardless, the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) went ahead and slashed the price at which natural gas would be sold between April 1 and September 30. Prices, however, are fixed transparently, based on a formula, details of which are public.
