The Delhi High Court recently ruled in favor of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) in the 2018 KGD6 gas dispute entitling the state-owned company to recover Rs 20000-25000 crore (including interest) from Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). Despite the significant financial implications the state-owned company has failed to disclose the ruling to its shareholders. Notably readers must note that the discloser is mandated under the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)’s Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) regulations. However to everyones surprise neither ONGC nor the government has made any official statement after the courts order. Also no disclosure has been filed on stock exchange websites informing the shareholders about the same. As per legal experts ONGC is legally required to promptly demand payment from RIL after the court order as there is no stay from a higher court. However ONGC is yet to provide any clarity or disclosure on the actions taken following the Delhi HC ruling Moreover it has also failed to make the court order public. On February 14 a division bench of the Delhi High Court comprising Justice Rekha Palli and Justice Saurabh Banerjee overturned a previous single bench ruling in the KGD6 gas dispute. We are setting aside the impugned order of May 9 2023 passed by the single judge and the arbitral award passed by the arbitral tribunal on July 24 2018 as they are contrary to the settled position of law the division bench stated in its judgment. A day after the division benchs ruling RIL informed its shareholders that it would analyze the judgment and file an appeal before the Supreme Court of India. In contrast ONGC and the government have remained silent providing no disclosure or update to ONGC’s shareholders regarding the court order. About the Reliance-ONGC Dispute The dispute began in July 2013 when suspecting reservoir connectivity of its KG-D5 and G-4 blocks with that of Reliances KG-D6 ONGC on July 22 2023 wrote to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) stating a detailed geological & geophysical (G&G) interpretation of the available data on the Godavari and KG-DWN-98/2 blocks shows. Evidence of lateral continuity of gas pools into KG-D6. Simply put it meant that subsurface gas pools of the Reliance block and the ONGC blocks appeared to be connected with possible migration of gas between the two as per a report by news agency PTI. And since Reliance started producing first it might have drained out ONGCs resources as well. ONGC requested the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) an upstream regulatory arm of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to provide it with G&G data along with the production and well data of the contiguous area of block KG-DWN-98/3. (With inputs from agencies)