Gujarat’s gas field stake is a Rs20,000 crore scam: 'Tehelka'

The Narendra Modi government gave away 10% stake in a KG Basin gas field to GeoGlobal Resources, a company that existed only on paper. This has been alleged in a report published by the Tehelka news magazine on its website recently.

The Tehelka write-up, which quotes extensively from the CAG report on the deal between GeoGlobal and the state government-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC), says that the deal gave the Barbados company Rs20,000 crore, virtually for nothing.

The GSPC formed a consortium in March 2003 with GeoGlobal Resources India Inc and an Indian company named Jubilant Enpro Pvt Ltd, to bid for a gas block measuring approximately 4,57,000 acres in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin. As per the Modi government’s own estimates, the gas field was worth about $20 billion (Rs1,10,000 crore).

Interestingly, GeoGlobal was incorporated in Barbados with $64 capital just six days before the formation of the consortium. Further, it was a one-man company as it was controlled effectively by just one person named Jean Paul Roy, a resident of Guatemala.

Tehelka has alleged that the Barbados-based company didn’t
pay a single penny for the 10% stake given to it by the Gujarat government.