India's Reliance To Built Gas Pipeline, Signed $4.5 bn Gas Contracts

India's biggest company Reliance Industries Ltd said it has signed contracts worth $4.5 billion to develop gas fields off India's southeast coast to meet its production targets.

The spending will be part of $5.2 billion of investment the company plans for the area, P.M.S. Prasad, the company's president for oil and gas, told reporters at the weekend in a briefing in Rajamundry, the port city in southern India near its fields. Gas production will start on schedule in 2008, he said.

Reliance plans to build a 1,400-kilometer pipeline to supply gas to the state of Gujarat in the nation's west, passing the country's business capital, Mumbai.

The pipeline will be built by Reliance Gas Transportation Ltd.