OREANDA-NEWS. June 28, 2011. State-run gas utility GAIL India Ltd today said it should be exempted from payment of fuel subsidies as it does not get any upside from rise in crude oil or natural gas price.

GAIL along with Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) have to compensate for at least one third of the revenue that fuel retailers lose on selling auto and cooking fuel at the government controlled rates.

"We have been saying that GAIL should be out of subsidy sharing mechanism as unlike oil and gas producer, we do not get any incremental revenue on increase in oil and gas price," GAIL Chairman and Managing Director B C Tripathi told reporters here.

Upstream firms contributed Rs 30,297 crore or 38.75 per cent of the total revenue loss of Rs 78,189 crore in 2010-11 fiscal. GAIL's share in this was Rs 2,111 crore or 6.97 per cent of the total upstream share.

ONGC, whose revenue increases with rise in crude oil prices , paid Rs 24,892 crore, or 82.16 per cent of the upstream contribution, towards fuel subsidies. Tripathi said various government appointment committees, notably ones headed by Planning Commission Member B K Chaturvedi and Kirit Parikh, too, have opined that GAIL.