RIL has confirmed oil & gas discovery in the Cauvery basin, where it has four of the 10 blocks.The company has sent a discovery notice to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, or DGHC, which is assessing the extent of the discovery.

The company is still assessing the commerciality of the find. The find has approx 30 billion cu. Ft. of gas per day and 1,000 gallons of oil.

The company has said that it can''t comment on whether the Cauvery find compares with the KG basin finds.

Earlier, CNBC-TV18 had reported thattThis would be RIL''s first success in the Cauvery Basin. The company has already made a series of discoveries in the KG Basin, where it had made the world''s largest gas find in 2002.

RIL''s seen recent developments in the upstream business, particularly in the area of excavation and development. P M S Prasad, president and CEO, petroleum business, RIL, said that in India, there was an upstream opportunity that is still under-explored, as only 15 per cent of the Indian basins have yet been explored.

"India is under-explored and only 15 per cent of Indian basins have been explored, mostly on land and shallow water. The deep-water basins were not exactly explored, as there wasn''t any incentive for companies to go and explore and no discoveries for a long time. So, the government of India decided that through the NELP they will invite companies who bring in the capital, expertise, technology and then allow them to explore at their own risk.

"If they find something the government will allow them to recover the cost through the production phase. As a result of NELP, a lot of people have started coming into India and sourced lands," he said.

According to Prasad, Reliance ventured into deep-water exploration as they saw an opportunity there. "Reliance straight away went into deep-water exploration. Deep-water has its own challenges, but we also saw an opportunity here. The opportunity is 43%, nearly half of the sedimentary basins in India or the deep-water," observed Prasad.

"The centre needs more gas because with more gas you do not need to depend upon a big central generation. You do not need to worry about base load and peak power. And if you don''t use the gas, it stays in the reservoir where it has been lying for millions of years," he added.