RIL gives up on showcase gas fields in KG-D6?

New Delhi: Has Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) given up on Dhirubhai 1 and Dhirubhai 3 — two of its showcase gas fields — in the KG-D6 block? One can infer as much from the company's submission to a House panel, saying drilling more wells would not raise output but would amount to flushing money down the drain.      "With new data emerging from four years of production, it is now clear that not much gas can be produced from this field... drilling further wells in the field would not add any incremental production but only lead to infructuous investments," RIL executive director P M S Prasad has said in a letter to chairman of Parliament's standing committee on finance, Yashwant Sinha.      Prasad's letter comes in response to the panel's latest report asking the government to rethink its decision on implementing a new pricing formula from April that is expected to double domestic gas price. It also recommended that RIL be asked to sell gas at the old rate to make up for the quantity by which it has missed the supply target.      The two fields, together with the MA oil field, are producing 14 mcmd (million cubic metres per day) against 80 mcmd envisaged in the $8.8-billion field development plan as water and sand have choked the drilled wells.      RIL and DGH — the oil ministry's technical arm — has been at loggerheads over drilling more wells ever since the output started falling in 2010. DGH has been insistent on drilling more wells to boost output. In a submission to a House panel, RIL has said drilling more wells would mean flushing money down the drain