A team of international experts should be appointed to verify if Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is knowingly producing less gas from its Andhra offshore field in order to take advantage of higher price in future, RIL has suggested.

P M S Prasad, executive director at RIL, wrote a letter to the Oil Ministry, claiming that that it was just impossible for any firm to hoard gas. He also claimed that the copany’s move of scaling down the cost of developing the oil & gas block by $3 billion from the approved $8.8 billion was in accordance with lower reserve & output estimates.

The RIL executive said people associated with the oil & gas industry could easily understand that hoarding gas was technically impossible as oil & gas reservoirs could not inert cold storage facilities.

Suggesting the appointment of an international team of experts, he added, “There was always the option of appointing a team of internationally reputed technical experts, familiar with depositorial systems (oil and gas reservoirs), to assess reservoir conditions.”

Prasad’s letter to the Oil Ministry followed anti-corruption activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal’s recent allegations that RIL is hoarding gas to take advantage of higher price later.

Meanwhile, RIL has softened its stand on CAG audit, and agreed to allow the national auditor to evaluate its expenses in the KG-D6 gas block, where production has fallen drastically over the past years.