The government's new pricing regime for domestic natural gas is being mainly opposed by import lobbies as increasing imports of the fuel means bigger profits for these lobbies, Petroleum minister M Veerappa Moily said.

The government has plans to revise gas prices, but the plan has been facing severe criticism from the very beginning. A few weeks back, CPI senior leader Gurudas Dasgupta termed the plan as a big "scam in the making" and a move to benefit Reliance Industries.

But, Mr. Moily argued on Wednesday that India needed huge investments in the energy sector to exploit its vast wealth of natural resources, but nobody would make investments unless prices were revised.

He stressed that revision of prices were necessary to make potential investments in the energy sector feasible, claiming that exploitation of domestic sources could help cut the country's $160 billion oil import bill.

Speaking on the topic, he added, "The opposition is mainly coming from the import lobby. These people know that if the situation remains as it is, our imports would go up and they would stand to gain."

Mr. Moily also claimed that his ministry had suggested a lower price for the natural gas produced from domestic fields than the price suggested by the Rangarajan committee.