Kirit Parikh panel may recommend price caps to help moderate CNG rates

A government-appointed gas price review panel, led by Kirit Parikh, is likely to recommend price caps for natural gas produced from legacy fields of state-owned firms to help moderate CNG and piped cooking gas rates, while keeping the pricing formula for difficult fields unchanged.

The panel, which was tasked with suggesting a “fair price to the end-consumer” while ensuring “market-oriented, transparent and reliable pricing regime for India’s long-term vision for ensuring a gas-based economy”, may opt to suggest two different pricing regimes, officials said.

For the legacy or old fields of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) — where the cost has long been recovered and which are currently governed by a formula that uses rates in gas-surplus nations such as the US,