The Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry has rejected the “integrated development plan” submitted by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and its partner British Petroleum (BP plc) for development and production of 16 gas discoveries and instead asked it to restrict pre-development expenses only to fields that have proved commercial viability.

The Managing Committee (MC), led by the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) chief, rejected the proposal for undertaking concept validation and front-end engineering design (FEED) for all the 16 discoveries around the present productive Dhirubhai-1 and 3 fields in the KG-D6 block.