New Delhi, May 21 -- Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Thursday told the Supreme Court that its development of the KG-D6 basin has yielded significantly higher returns for the government than a potential operation by state-owned ONGC would have achieved.

On the third day of arguments in the long-standing gas migration dispute, the RIL-led consortium claimed it had proposed joint development with ONGC as early as 2002-an initiative it alleges the government failed to facilitate. RIL further argued that its timely extraction prevented a massive loss to the exchequer, asserting that the government gained more from RIL's production than it would have even if ONGC had commenced operations a decade earlier.

A three-judge bench led by Chief Jus...