Mr Sharma's exit comes days before PLL was to award the $650-million contract for construction of port facilities at Dahej (Gujarat) for importing five million tonne of liquified natural gas annually from 2003.

When contacted, Mr Sharma said, "I was not feeling comfortable under the present setup", and declined to elaborate.

The PLL board, chaired by the Petroleum Secretary S Narayan, accepted the resignation of Mr Sharma on November 1, barely hours before Mr Narayan was shifted to the Finance Ministry as Revenue Secretary.

During this meeting, promoter oil companies had ejected National Thermal Power Corporation from the JV by deciding to take its 10 per cent equity among themselves.

Mr Sharma, who came on deputation from Gas Authority of India (GAIL), a promoter, was responsible for finalising the 25-year Gas Purchase Agreement from Ras Gas, a state-owned company of Qatar.

Asked if he was joining the proposed LNG/Gas venture of Reliance, he would neither confirm nor deny the move. Petroleum Minister Ram Naik, however, said the Petronet JV would complete the LNG projects as scheduled despite the exit of NTPC. These developments in PLL came within a fortnight of the government's assurance to the visiting Energy Minister of Qatar that the JV would go ahead with import of LNG as per schedule.

Qatar had insisted on guarantees for completion of the project from the promoting companies -- GAIL, Indian Oil, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Bharat Petroleum.

Incidentally, NTPC is a 26 per cent equity partner in the rival private sector LNG import project at Pipavav in Gujarat. Consequent to the decision to ease out NTPC, the four promoter oil PSUs would raise their stake in the JV, which would import 7.5 million tonne of LNG annually at Dahej (Gujarat) and Kochi, to 12.5 per cent each.