New Delhi, Feb. 25: An empowered committee of secretaries today approved Cairn India’s proposal to lay a pipeline for supplying oil to Gujarat from its Rajasthan field.

The Edinburgh-based company sought clearance from the government to lay the $800-million pipeline after Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd — the official buyer of cairn’s Rajasthan crude — said it could take only 1-1.2 million tonnes of the 7.5-million-tonne output planned from Cairn’s Mangala field in Rajasthan.

The Mangala field will begin production in the second quarter of 2009.

Cairn and its partner ONGC will lay a 585-km pipeline from Rajasthan’s Barmer district to Salaya in Gujarat. Cairn’s Rajasthan field is estimated to have a peak output of 190,000 barrels a day.

Petroleum ministry officials said the committee recommended that the production sharing contract for the Rajasthan block provide for shifting of delivery point.

It also decided not to charge Cairn and ONGC any tariff for transporting crude through the Barmer-Salaya pipeline once its cost is recovered by the operator and it becomes a government property, the officials said.

ONGC discovery

ONGC today said it had discovered four sources of crude oil and natural gas and had notified the director general of hydrocarbons about them. Three of the discoveries are onshore.

The company made the onshore discoveries in the wells Kosamba-41 and Chaklasi-8 — both in the western region — and Mekrang-7, which is in Assam.

The offshore discovery has been made in the Arabian Sea.

Reliance row

Mumbai High Court today refused to lift the interim stay restraining Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) from creating third party interest in the supply of gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin.

The bench was hearing the gas sharing dispute between Mukesh Ambani’s RIL and Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources Ltd.