RIL has awarded a five-year drilling contract to a joint venture of Transocean and Pacific Drilling to construct and operate a brand new ultra-deepwater drillship to boost its eastern offshore exploration campaign

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has leased a brand new ultra-deepwater drillship to boost its eastern offshore exploration campaign, reports PTI.

"The newly-built ultra-deepwater drillship ‘Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2’ commenced operations for RIL in India under a five-year drilling contract," Transocean Ltd, which built the rig, said in a statement.

RIL had awarded a five-year drilling contract to a joint venture of Transocean and Pacific Drilling to construct and operate the drillship. RIL will pay $495,000 per day for the Samsung-designed drillship for the first six months and $510,000 per day for the remaining period of the contract.

"The dynamically positioned ‘Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2’, one of the 24 ultra-deepwater floaters in the Transocean fleet, includes the most advanced drilling capabilities in the offshore drilling industry," the statement said.

Transocean is also building an enhanced Enterprise-class drillship, named ‘Discoverer India’, for RIL. Operations are expected to commence during the fourth quarter of 2010.

RIL will pay a day rate of $537,000 for the first six months for ‘Discover India’ and $557,000 for the remaining period of the initial five-year contract. The company can extend the term of the drilling contract to seven or 10 years.

The company currently has four deep-sea drill rigs from Transocean for exploratory and development drilling in its portfolio of blocks that includes gas discovery blocks D6 and NEC-25.
 

The company had to extend the NFO closure in order to meet its target. But will the Birla AMC incur a loss while running this fund?

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund (MF) is keen to attract fixed-deposit holders through its Capital Protection (CP) Fund and aims to mop up as much as Rs700 crore. According to sources, the company’s new fund offer (NFO), Birla Capital Protection Fund, had been extended to 10th March from 5th March as it was unable to meet its ambitious target. Birla MF is targeting close to Rs600-Rs700 crore and has so far managed to generate only Rs200 crore.

“The NFO was launched on 5 February 2010 and was scheduled to go on for a month. However, in view of the fewer days on account of holidays and breaks and to ensure convenience for investors, the due date was extended to 10th March. The NFO collection figures can only be verified after the scheme is closed for subscription, and the MIS is generated,” said a spokesperson for Birla MF.
While the fund is aggressively marketing the capital protection product, the irony is that the product will leave a hole in the capital of Birla Asset Management Company (AMC). Industry sources reveal that the company can earn 1.75% per annum in this product over a period of 27 months, which is the duration of the scheme. This means an earning of 3.9%. However, the cost of running the scheme will be much higher. Here is the math.

The processing charge for the issue will be about 0.3%. This leaves the AMC with 3.6% out of the fees. As against this, Birla MF will offer 2.75% as commission to distributors. That leaves it with 0.85%. If the Fund manages to raise, say, Rs500 crore from the scheme, its earnings over the 27 months will be just Rs4.25 crore. However, the Fund has already spent over Rs7 crore in advertisements and other promotional costs. This leaves the fund house with a large loss.

“The advertisement for the NFO had been done extensively with the aim of generating awareness for the Fund. The expense ratio that the Fund intends to charge the investor would be 1.5%,” added the company official. The official, however, declined to divulge any details of the Fund’s target or how the company would recover its advertisement costs.

“The advertisement charges are sometimes deducted from the scheme after some time. The NFO has collected around Rs220 crore,” said an independent financial advisor (IFA).

This would be hard in this kind of a Fund where returns are thin. The Fund will allocate 90% of the money to bonds and 10% to equity. It intends to reduce tax liability by the triple-indexation method.
 

All commodities, except agricultural items, will be allowed to trade on the MCX, NCDEX and ICEX between 10am and 11.30pm from Monday to Friday

Commodity exchanges MCX, NCDEX and ICEX have reduced trade timings by 25 minutes for non-agricultural commodities to align with the US daylight saving time, reports PTI.

According to separate statements issued by the three exchanges, all commodities except agricultural items will be allowed to trade between 10am and 11.30pm from Monday to Friday.

At present, trading is on till 11.55pm.

The change in trade timings will be effective from 15th March for all the three exchanges. However, the timing for agro-commodities stays unchanged between 10am and 5pm while on Saturdays all commodities will be traded between 10am to 2pm.

The daylight-saving time begins in the US this weekend and it makes the days seem longer and pave the way to spring and summer.