Vedanta has approached the Delhi High Court challenging the Central government’s decision to deny extension to them to continue utilising the Cambay Basin oil and gas block [Vedanta Limited v Union of India & Ors]. .Justice Amit Sharma heard the matter on September 26 when Attorney General (AG) R Venkatramani appeared for the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) and challenged the maintainability of the plea.According to the order, Vedanta made an offer after which the AG sought time to obtain instructions. However, the details of the offer made are not clear from the court order. The case will be heard next on October 10. .Vedanta had been operating the offshore CB-OS/2 block in Gujarat’s Cambay Basin since its production sharing contract (PSC) was granted on August 30, 1998. The block includes the Lakshmi and Gauri fields, which, according to reports, currently produce around 3,400 barrels of oil per day and 3.4 lakh standard cubic metres of gas daily.The PSC expired on June 30, 2023. Although operations continued while Vedanta’s extension request was under consideration, the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas formally rejected the application by way of a letter dated September 19.The government then directed ONGC to take interim control of assets, data, operations and responsibilities associated with CB-OS/2 until a new contract is awarded. In its plea, Vedanta has argued that the government decision is contrary to its own 2017 Policy, as it kept Vedanta’s extension application pending for more than four years in violation of the timelines even though it was obligated to decide the same in nine months. “Respondent Nos. 1 and 2 have, thus, wrongfully taken advantage of their own wrong and have acted unfairly and arbitrarily by rejecting the Application on the pretext of alleged factors which admittedly did not exist,” the company said. Further, it stated that the rejection of their application was “ex facie arbitrary, illegal and in unreasonable exercise of power.According to the plea,“It is based on irrelevant considerations and completely ignores relevant considerations. The decision in the Rejection Letter has been made without any application of mind. The grounds for rejection of the Application ex facie are common commercial issues that arise in the normal course of Petroleum Operations under contracts such as production sharing contracts. Further, the purported factors alleged to constitute defaults are false and factually inaccurate on the face of the record.”.Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Rajiv Nayar with advocates Anuradha Dutt, Anish Kapur, Nikhita K Suri, Gurudas Khurana and Raghav Dutt appeared for Vedanta. Union of India was represented through Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Ashish K Dixit as well as advocates Umar Hashmi, Mayank Upadhyay, Iqra Sheikh and Aditya Sood. Attorney General R Venkataramani with advocates Nakul Sachdeva, Sagar Arora, Shreyang Rathi, Shrinkhla Tiwari, Abhinandan S and CGSC Ashish K Dixit represented the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons. Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma with advocates Abhishek Gupta, Amit Gupta, RU Prabhat, Shubham Sharma, Vikramaditya Singh, Vinay Yadav, Naman, Yashwardhan Sharma, Kumar Kartikeya, Shaswat Pandey and Shubham Sharma appeared for the ONGC. Advocates Ajoy Roy, Avlokita Rajvi, Lakshya Khanna and Shradha Sriram represented the intervenors. .[Read Order]
