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Strong global cues helped Indian markets to stay in the green

Indian markets continued their uptrend on the back of strong Asian and US markets. At the end of the day, the Sensex shot up 202 points to 16,429 from the previous day’s close, while the Nifty closed at 4,914, up 58 points.

Tomorrow we expect the Indian markets to stay in positive territory.

From here on if the Sensex closes above 16,500, the market will continue its bull run. However, in the near-term, get ready to buy stocks at a decline.

At 12:00 hrs IST, the Sensex was trading at 16,479—252 points higher from the previous day’s close. However at 14:00 hrs IST, the Sensex was trading up 145 points at 16,372 from the previous day’s close.

At the end of the day, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) rose 1%. The government has reportedly demanded another $2.70 million from RIL towards royalty and profit petroleum payments on gas produced from the Krishna-Godavari D6 basin for the six-month period from April-September 2009, arguing that the company did not take into account the marketing margin it levies while calculating the dues.

Sujana Metal Products was up 1%, after the company said that one of the promoter group companies had hiked its stake in the firm.

Parsvnath Developers remained flat. As per reports, the company said that Pradeep Kumar Jain, chairman and promoter of the company, revoked a small portion of pledged shares.

Areva T&D India surged 4%, on reports that the company had secured a plant contract worth Rs120 crore.

Firstobject Technologies shot up 5% after the company received provisional approval and allotment of built-up space for the purpose of software development activities from Visakhapatnam Special Economic Zone.

Sree Sakthi Paper Mills has said that its board has cleared a modernisation-cum-expansion programme with a capital investment of Rs11.62 crore. The stock was up 3%.

Housing Development and Infrastructure has bagged a new slum rehabilitation project in Mumbai worth Rs2,000 crore. The stock ended flat.
Concurrent (India) Infra has procured an earth-work contract for Rs10 crore at Harihar, Karnataka. However, the stock was down 5%.

During trading hours, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said that food prices have started falling and will dip further next month. But the government will not restrain large sugar firms from buying sugar from the domestic market, he said. Mr Pawar also said that the wheat harvest would exceed last year’s record 80.6 million tonnes, giving a slightly higher forecast than last week's formal government estimate of 80.28 million tonnes.

Meanwhile, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said that the economy may grow at more than 8% in the fiscal year 2010-11, after growing at around 7.5% in the current fiscal year ending March 2010. He further added that the government’s measures to tame rising inflation would take some time to make an impact.

On Tuesday, Reserve Bank of India governor D Subbarao said that the central bank cannot target inflation, as transmission of monetary policy is muted in the country. He added that it was difficult for monetary policy to attack supply-side driven inflation.

During the day, Asia’s key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore rose by between 0.63%-2.72%. Stock markets in China and Taiwan were closed due to Lunar New Year holidays.

On Tuesday, 16 February 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 170 points while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 19 points and 31 points respectively.

In premarket trading, the Dow was trading 13 points higher.
 

A cartel of state-run oil companies will invest around $2.25 billion initially in development of a giant oil project in Venezuela, which will provide India an annual supply of 3.6 million tonnes of crude oil

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and its partners Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will invest around $2.25 billion initially in development of a giant oil project they won in Venezuela last week, reports PTI.

The Carabobo-1 project of the Orinoco extra-heavy oil belt of Venezuela would involve a total investment of $19 billion over 25 years. The three state-run companies have for the time being sought a government nod for investing $2.25 billion.

Official sources said that ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas unit of ONGC, IOC and OIL, may be able to fund most of the future investment from the expected revenues when the project goes on stream in three years.

Last week, the three companies won rights to develop the Carabobo-1 project along with Spain's Repsol-YPF and Petronas of Malaysia after committing a signing amount of $1.05 billion and an equivalent to Venezuela's state-run PdV in a loan.

Repsol-YPF, OVL and Petronas will each hold 11% stake in Carabobo-1, with 7% being split between IOC and OIL. The balance 60% will be with PdV.

The project will give India 3.6 million tonnes of crude oil annually out of the envisaged output of 400,000 barrels a day.

Sources said that the $2.25 billion investment would cover OVL-IOC-OIL's share of $472.50 million in the signature bonus as also their initial instalments of the loan to PdV and capital expenditure in the project.

The entire signature bonus is to be borne by Repsol, Petronas and the three Indian companies in proportion to their shareholding.

Of the $2.25 billion initial investment proposed, $1.13 billion would come from OVL while IOC and OIL would put in about $433 million-$435 million each.

Sources said that the investment proposal would first go to the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (ESC) before going to the Cabinet for final approval.

The Carabobo-1 project, comprising Carabobo-1 Central and Carabobo-1 North blocks, would develop extra-heavy crude production capacity of up to 400,000 barrels per day (20 million tonnes a year). Early output of at least 50,000 bpd is slated to start in 2012-13, rising to a peak in 2016.

The project investment of $19 billion includes cost of constructing a heavy crude upgrader that can turn Orinoco's tar-like oil into valuable synthetic crude. The 200,000-bpd upgrader may be built at Soledad in Anzoategui state to produce synthetic crude of 32 degree API or higher by 2015-16.

Since signature bonus is to be paid by only foreign firms, the share of OVL, IOC and OIL would be $472.50 million or 45% of $1.05 billion. They will also contribute a similar amount to PdV as their share of credit.