Amid resurfacing of the face-off between Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries ltd (RIl) with the national auditor seeking Petroleum Ministry’s intervention on the company reportedly not having shared some documents still needed for the financial audit of its KG-D6 fields, Minister for Petroleum M Veerappa Moily on Friday dismissed the issue claiming that cooperation was being received from everybody.
Asked to comment on the possible collision between RIl and the national auditor where CAG is learnt to have written to the ministry on July 3 seeking its intervention over alleged non-cooperation from the oil major, Moily in an interaction with mediapersons said, “we are getting cooperation from everybody. There is no problem at all.” When prodded further about CAG having written to him on the matter, the minister said, “I don’t know, this I must find out.”
In fact, a nonchalant Moily went on to add that “the question is we should not destroy them, then you get destroyed yourself, I am telling you. This is what is going to happen. If you destroy somebody, you get destroyed yourself”. Immediately after this though, he adopted a cautious note and said that nothing should be achieved by breaking rules, and it would be ensured that national interest is safeguarded.
“We want public sector to be involved (in exploration and production of oil and gas), we want private to be involved. But nothing should be done by breaking the rules or regulation. That we will safeguard. National interest will be safeguarded,” the minister said. CAG Principal Director of Audit (Economic and Service Ministries) AM Bajaj in the July 3 letter stated that RIl was providing information required in phases and some records sought were still pending. RIl on the other hand is learnt to have claimed that it is in the process of collecting all the relevant information sought by the CAG and this would be provided to the national auditor once it is collated.
CAG at the request of the Petroleum Ministry is auditing KG-D6 spending for 2008-09 to 2011-12. It restarted the audit in April this year after issues like scope and extent of its scrutiny were resolved. RIl had previously stated that CAG cannot contractually perform a performance audit on it and Production Sharing Contract (PSC) only provides for a Government appointed auditor to verify reasonableness of all charges and credits. CAG, too, has stated that it is not planning to a do a performance audit of the company but only wants to examine “propriety” of expenses made. For doing that CAG has been given the discretion of requisitioning records as it deems fit.