Reliance Industries (RIL), India's largest private oil refiner, is in the final stage of its biggest-ever investment cycle for launching a digital 4G business (Jio), expanding petrochemical facilities and making its refineries more efficient. For RIL, a large capital expenditure cycle is not unusual. Will the massive borrowings dent its balance sheet?

Experts say giving explorers freedom to price gas gives India a chance to exploit the current low global prices of services for exploring 28 basins with 260 trillion cubic feet (tcf) recoverable shale gas, 20 tcf natural gas, and other resources.

The Budget for 2016-17, the second full-year Budget by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to make changes in the way Oil Industry Development Cess is levied to provide relief to companies such as ONGC and Cairn India that are being battered by oil prices plunging to 11-year low.

\"At least, 9 billion cubic meters of natural gas valued at around Rs 8,600 crore may have flown from ONGC's idle Bay of Bengal fields to adjoining KG-D6 fields of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL).\"

RIL began gas production from KG-D6 block in April 2009 while ONGC is yet to begin development work on gas fields in G-4 that were discovered more than 12 years back.

A cess of Rs 4,500 per tonne (about $9 per barrel) is levied on crude oil produced by state-owned ONGC and Oil India from fields given to them on a nomination basis.

The state-owned oil producers producers want govt to levy ad-valorem rate of cess which will result in higher payouts when prices are high and lower payout when rates fall.

ONGC discovered oil and gas in the well F-1 in the northern part of the KG basin block KG-DWN-98/2 or KG-D5, which sits next to the flagging KG-D6 block of Reliance Industries.

ONGC board earlier this month approved submission of the draft field development plan for one set of oil and gas discoveries made in the eastern offshore Block of the KG-D5, which sits next to Reliance Industries' flagging KG-D6 area.

With Parliament's monsoon session due to begin from Tuesday, and various corporate quarterly results putting forth a bleak picture, here are the five stocks that remained in news today.

Accepting a government offer to conduct Drill Stem Test (DST) under limited cost to retain gas discoveries that otherwise would have been taken away for not meeting timelines, RIL has opted to do confirmatory test on two of the three contentious gas finds.

Reliance Power said on Saturday that it will set up a 2 million tonnes per annum floating natural gas (LNG) import terminal and a 3,000 megawatt power plant in Bangladesh.

During the year, RIL opted to relinquish two blocks KG-DWN-2003/1 and CY-PR-DWN-2001/3 as part of the ongoing effort to high grade its upstream asset portfolio, the company said in its annual report for 2014-15.

The Krishna-Godavari Basin has again become the hotbed of action. The Modi govt has acted tough against Reliance Industries, opposing its demand for arbitration for a revision in gas price.

\"We expect RIL to report strong results for the fourth quarter of the financial year on the back of its strength in refining margins, expected at $9.65 per barrel,\" BNP Paribas said, adding this was likely to reflect in the earnings.

Kotak upgraded Reliance to 'buy' with a revised target of Rs 1,040.

Niko Resources said RIL's gas discovery MJ-1 may hold 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas resources, roughly half of the reserves in the KG-D6 block's main gas fields.

The RIL stock closed 3.51 per cent higher on the BSE. The Sensex heavyweight opened at Rs 836 level, rose to an intra-day high of Rs 869.15 and a low of Rs 833 before closing at Rs 862.05 on the BSE.

Niko cited an independent resources evaluation report for the MJ Discovery in the D6 Block in India from Deloitte LLP to state that the find may hold a best case estimate of 1.4 Tcf of gas and condensate.