The Supreme Court on Friday referred the long-running dispute between Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and the Union government over alleged migration and extraction of natural gas in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin to mediation, appointing former Supreme Court judge Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai to facilitate a possible settlement.

A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi passed the order after being informed that the parties had been unable to arrive at a viable solution despite exploring the possibility of a settlement.

The Court requested Justice Desai to act as mediator and directed that she be assisted by two domain experts to be suggested by the parties.

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Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Reliance, informed the bench that the company was agreeable to mediation and suggested that a former judge of the Supreme Court be appointed for the purpose, with assistance from domain experts.

The Court requested the parties to contact Justice Desai to fix a date and time for the mediation according to her convenience. It did not prescribe a timeline for the proceedings and permitted the parties to make both written and oral submissions before the mediator.

The matter has been listed after four weeks for the parties to apprise the Court of the progress made in the mediation.

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The Court was hearing appeals filed by RIL and its consortium partners, BP Exploration (Alpha) Limited and Niko (NECO) Limited, challenging a Delhi High Court judgment dated February 14, 2025, which set aside an arbitral award in their favour.

The dispute concerns allegations that natural gas migrated from adjoining offshore blocks operated by the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) into the consortium’s KG-D6 block, from where it was allegedly extracted. The Union government had alleged that the consortium produced gas that it was not entitled to exploit.

The dispute went to international arbitration. In July 2018, a majority of the arbitral tribunal rejected the government’s claim against the consortium. A single judge of the Delhi High Court subsequently upheld the award, but a division bench set it aside in February 2025. RIL and its partners have challenged that decision before the Supreme Court.