AFTER five years, a series of contradictory rulings, and successive, public airings of a vitriolic family spat, India’s Supreme Court has ruled on a row over the pricing of natural gas from one of India’s most important oilfields. One of the warring, billionaire Ambani brothers has won a victory over the other, and a potential block to desperately-needed energy investment has been lifted, but foreign investors may not be cheering.

In 2005 Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother, Anil, agreed a price at which Mukesh’s Reliance Industries—India’s biggest listed firm—would sell gas to Anil’s Reliance Natural Resources. That gas, from the Krishna Godavari basin in the Bay of Bengal, is destined for vast power plants in northern India. In 2007 the government waded in, nearly doubling the price. Last year Mumbai’s High Court upheld the siblings’ original agreement, prompting Mukesh’s firm to appeal to the Supreme Court. On May 7th it ruled in favour of Mukesh, saying that the original agreement was not binding; that the government-set price was; and ordering the brothers to renegotiate their contract.

The saga has gripped India in part because of its soap-operatic drama. The billionaire Ambani brothers came to blows soon after inheriting India’s biggest conglomerate, the Reliance group of companies, when their father died in 2002. Their mother brokered a demerger in 2005, under which the brothers’ empires have blossomed. Mukesh Ambani is today the world's fourth-richest man with a fortune estimated at $29 billion; Anil is thought to be worth about $13.7 billion.

But both, it seems, would like to see the other fail. In 2008 MTN, a South African mobile-telecoms company, pulled out of negotiations on a multibillion-dollar merger with Anil’s Reliance Communications, after Mukesh said he had the right of first refusal over any such sale. But gas has sparked the nastiest feud between the siblings yet. Last year Anil published a series of front-page advertisements in newspapers accusing the government of favouring Reliance Industries. It in turn, countered that Anil was waging a “malicious campaign” against Mukesh.

AFTER five years, a series of contradictory rulings, and successive, public airings of a vitriolic family spat, India’s Supreme Court has ruled on a row over the pricing of natural gas from one of India’s most important oilfields. One of the warring, billionaire Ambani brothers has won a victory over the other, and a potential block to desperately-needed energy investment has been lifted, but foreign investors may not be cheering.

In 2005 Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother, Anil, agreed a price at which Mukesh’s Reliance Industries—India’s biggest listed firm—would sell gas to Anil’s Reliance Natural Resources. That gas, from the Krishna Godavari basin in the Bay of Bengal, is destined for vast power plants in northern India. In 2007 the government waded in, nearly doubling the price. Last year Mumbai’s High Court upheld the siblings’ original agreement, prompting Mukesh’s firm to appeal to the Supreme Court. On May 7th it ruled in favour of Mukesh, saying that the original agreement was not binding; that the government-set price was; and ordering the brothers to renegotiate their contract.

The saga has gripped India in part because of its soap-operatic drama. The billionaire Ambani brothers came to blows soon after inheriting India’s biggest conglomerate, the Reliance group of companies, when their father died in 2002. Their mother brokered a demerger in 2005, under which the brothers’ empires have blossomed. Mukesh Ambani is today the world's fourth-richest man with a fortune estimated at $29 billion; Anil is thought to be worth about $13.7 billion.

But both, it seems, would like to see the other fail. In 2008 MTN, a South African mobile-telecoms company, pulled out of negotiations on a multibillion-dollar merger with Anil’s Reliance Communications, after Mukesh said he had the right of first refusal over any such sale. But gas has sparked the nastiest feud between the siblings yet. Last year Anil published a series of front-page advertisements in newspapers accusing the government of favouring Reliance Industries. It in turn, countered that Anil was waging a “malicious campaign” against Mukesh.