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Oil exploration firms north-bound
FICCI favours selective privatisation
Bids for Delhi, Mumbai airports may be
Tatas to set up truck unit in West
Bengal
NDTV joint venture takes over Red FM
BSNL to invest Rs 19,400 crore next fiscal
Tata DTH to take off after April
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M&M buys UK forging group
China takes steps for yuan flexibility
EPF rate: TUs meet today
PetroMin wants OVL to share more details
Gold prices zoom
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Oil exploration firms north-bound
New Delhi, January 4 “Some geologists have already indicated about the possibility of hydrocarbon reserves in the Himalayan region. An agreement has been signed with the Alberta Research Institute, Canada, to conduct in-depth surveys about the potential of oil and gas reserves in the Himalayan belt before inviting bids for exploration,” Mr V.K. Sibal, Director General, Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), said. Talking to The Tribune, he said: “A task force has been set up to prepare a roadmap to study the new areas for oil and gas reserves. A high-level team from Canada is coming to India shortly and the work is expected to start soon. DGH has already earmarked a budget of $1 million for this purpose.” We are collecting data and necessary information from the public sector oil companies like ONGC and other agencies that have conducted surveys in the region for the past many years, he said. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas is pressing the ONGC to surrender the fields, where it has failed to undertake adequate digging to find out the reserves. Once the blocks are taken over from the company, they can be offered for bidding in the next round, said Mr Sibal. Plans are afoot, he said, to set up National Data Repository that would have all the information collected so far across different regions. The oil companies have already conducted 3-D survey over 70,000 square kilometre. “We expect to map the whole region to have complete prognosis and requisite information in the next one year. And consequently, the Northern region including Punjab, Haryana, J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal could be offered for exploration and production under the seventh round of National Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) in the next 2-3 years,” said DG, DGH. Incidentally, ONGC started the first oil and exploration in India started in Himachal Pradesh in early 50s near the Jawalaji temple with the collaboration of erstwhile Soviet Union though without any major success. According to estimates, it has spent over Rs 200 crore so far on digging in the state. Mr Sibal asserted with the technology upgradation and plenty of foreign exchange unlike in the past, there is a rethinking to assess the oil and gas reserves across the country, especially in the Himalayan region. As against five billion tonnes hydrocarbon reserves estimated in 1967, the reserves have been already upgraded to 28 billion tonnes by the ’80s. Further, with the new gas reserves found in Krishna-Cauvery Basin, the estimates have been further revised upwards. Chairman and Managing Director of ONGC Subir Raha has said that ONGC has lined up the ‘biggest-ever,’ seismic survey exercise for the exploration of oil and hydrocarbons in the country estimated to cost around $1 billion in the country. Notably, on the other side of border, Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL) has discovered oil and gas reserves at Pindori, situated 60 km from Rawalpindi. The initial estimates state that 750 to 800 barrels of crude oil per day besides 2.5 million cubic feet of gas per day will be pumped out of these reservoirs. The government is likely to offer 56 blocks under the sixth round of NELP for exploration and production of oil and gas reserves, added Mr Sibal.
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FICCI favours selective privatisation
New Delhi, January 4 “The ownership control and majority equity should be retained by the government in strategic PSUs and only 49 per cent equity should be offloaded through the IPO route,” Mr Poddar said in a wide-ranging interview with UNI. Mr Poddar suggested “monetisation” of the companies the government had been unable to sell for perennially making losses. Their land and other assets could be sold off, which would help minimise losses. The FICCI chief spoke against entering into a free trade agreement (FTA) with China as well as arriving at such an arrangement with Asian countries all in one go. Mr Poddar was cautious of not taking cudgels with the left parties on any issue and stressed the need for entering into a dialogue with the Left to convince them on the industry’s
point of view on contentious issues like privatisation and labour reforms. Taking a dig at the Left parties’ opposition to disinvestment in PSUs, the FICCI Chief urged them to have a rethink, saying their stand was not “principled”. “It certainly does not appear to be a
principle(d) stand. We ask them (Left parties) to reconsider the decision,” Mr Poddar said. Mr Poddar lauded the UPA Government for doing a “good job” despite the compulsions of coalition politics. He rated the economic establishment of the government very high for its professional management of the economy. “But the dharma of Indian politics has become coalition governments. We will see coalition governments for years to come now,” he said. The tycoon was bullish on India, the stock markets, the industry, Q3 corporate results, the government’s ability to find jobs for the bulk of the youth, and agricultural growth prospects.
— UNI
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Bids for Delhi, Mumbai airports
New Delhi, January 4 But it is unlikely that the entire process will be scrapped and new bids will be called following criticism from various corners, including from two senior officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) who have asked for fresh technical and financial bids. Sources said derailing the process at this stage would hurt the growth of the country’s aviation sector. According to reports, AAI’s Chairman K. Ramalingam and Member (Finance) V.D.V. Prasad Rao said in a dissenting note that criteria in request for proposals (RFPs) asking companies to quote experience of developing airports in non-OECD countries alone was to be considered. But they have considered the experience of operating and developing airports in Mexico — an OECD country. The group later explained experience in master-planning at Ecuador and Guatemala. The same does not relate to the criteria, yet this was considered and given marks. Meanwhile, though the consortia led by Reliance and GMR groups have reportedly emerged as the top runners in the Delhi and Mumbai airport bidding process, they are understood to have scored very poorly in an assessment by the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) on aspects related to employee integration and major property development. While both bidders ‘B’ (GMR) and ‘E’ (Reliance) scored the highest 8.4 points each on their “approach to and level of commitment for integration of employees” for the two airports, they were ranked a poor fourth and third when it came to “proportion of AAI staff targeted for integration” for Delhi and Mumbai airports, respectively. On the integration of employees, bidder ‘B’ received 2 marks for Delhi and Mumbai airports each, while ‘E’ scored 2.2 for Delhi and 2.3 for Mumbai. There were two players who scored more than these two bidders. In the alternative criteria adopted by the IMG on Human Resources approach, the IMG is understood to have said the bidder ‘E’ did not qualify for both airports. According to the request for proposal (RFP) document, the selected private consortia were supposed to have inducted 40 per cent of employees of Airports Authority of India (AAI) at these two airports. On yet another count of “experience in major property development”, the IMG is learnt to have clearly stated that Bidder ‘B,’ which was given a score of 4.5 on a scale of 0-5, “does not have any property related experience”. The IMG is learnt to have stated that the consultants in the bidding process have allocated marks for all the six criteria evenly, as also in all the sub-criteria. — (Agencies)
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Tatas to set up truck unit in West
Bengal
Kolkata, January 4 In order to discuss more about the proposal a three-member team of senior executives from Tata Motors called on Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee here last night. During the meeting the Tata representatives had reportedly sought the early government clearance for the land, required to build the new plant. The Chief Minister had readily given his accent to enable Tata Motors to take an early decision in this regard, official sources here today said. “Tata Motors who are actively considering West Bengal as their future investment destination had sought some land and we have agreed to allot them at the earliest”, the sources quoting the Chief Minister said. However, when contacted the Tata Motors sources neither confirmed nor denied the developments. They also refused to disclose the details of their meeting with the Chief Minister saying it was too early to comment on the new project. Incidentally, if the project materialises it would form the part of Tata Motors recent corporate decision to invest around Rs 5,000 crore in various new projects including the establishment of its third heavy vehicles and truck-manufacturing unit in West Bengal within the next two to three years. The previous plants of Tata Motors came up in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu several years ago.
— UNI
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NDTV joint venture takes over Red FM
New Delhi, January 4 The three radio companies hold licenses for FM radio broadcasting in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta respectively, under the brand name Red FM. Value Labs is a Hyderabad-based global IT service provider, with extensive experience in telecom and multimedia application development. NDTV is India’s leading news network, currently broadcasting 3 news and current affairs channels — NDTV 24x7, NDTV India and NDTV Profit. Astro is a leading media player in Malaysia and South East Asia. The Director, NDTV, Mr Narayan Rao said: “We’ve planning to enter into radio for some time now. We’re very excited about it especially with the option of migrating to Phase II without the old fixed license regime. We see a lot of cross media synergies by entering the space.”
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BSNL to invest Rs 19,400 crore next fiscal
New Delhi, January 4 While most part of the investment would come from internal accruals of BSNL, the corporation may resort to borrowing of Rs 5,000-6,000 crore from the market, Mr S.D. Saxena, Director (Finance), BSNL said. The investment plan has been finalised by the corporation and is yet to be ratified by the Planning Commission. Mr Saxena said nearly 80 per cent of the investment would go into expansion of mobile network and broadband, besides upgradation of switching system, wireless and other IT-related services. Expansion of the mobile network would be part of BSNL’s proposed mega tender for 60 million GSM lines envisaging an investment of over $4 billion. BSNL, which recently cut fixed line tariffs by about 28 per cent, has been struggling to check the rate of surrender of phones. For 2006-07, BSNL would lay 20 million lines across the country of which 80 per cent would be mobile. This is being done to meet immediate demand, BSNL officials said, adding the corporation would also aim at covering 14,000 villages with one telephone in each village over the next two years. These would be covered through satellite phone and HFCL would provide the phone equipment.
— PTI
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Tata DTH to take off after April
Bangalore, January 4 Disclosing this here today during an interaction, Tata Sons Director Jamshed J. Irani said the pilot project for DTH services would be conducted in Mumbai. He said other cities would be incorporated in a phased manner according to the feedback gained from the pilot project. Mr Irani said Tata Sons had a share of 80 per cent in the project with 20 per cent stake being with Star Television. He said Star TV would provide the content for the DTH programmes with his company only acting as a service provider. He declined to comment as to how many channels would be provided by the DTH service only saying that would depend on the operational reach of the Insat- 4C, which had been launched recently. Speaking on the “small car” project of Tata Motors, Mr Irani said even though the intention to provide a Rs 1 lakh car was announced three years back, the company was committed to providing a car in this range despite the increase in steel. He said the car would be on the road in 2007-08. He said prototypes had been made and the company was presently in the process of sourcing various materials needed for the car. He said as planned the components would be made in Pune but would be transported to the needed places so that they could be assembled thereof.
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M&M buys UK forging group
Mumbai, January 4 All three companies in the Stokes group are being acquired by Mahindras. Stokes Group includes three companies with two manufacturing firms situated at Walsall and Dudley, near Birmingham in UK and its major customers are Koyo Bearings, GWK Group, Land Rover, Bosch, Visteon, Ford and Jaguar among others, it said, M&M said in a statement. The UK group will become part of Mahindra’s engineering and auto components division, Mahindra Systems and Automotive Technologies (MSAT), it said. Khaitan & Co and Sherrards Solicitors, UK were the legal advisors for the deal to the company, it added.
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China takes steps for yuan flexibility
Shanghai, January 4 The new system, the latest in a long line of policies aimed at gradually freeing up the yuan, accompanied the introduction of open over-the-counter trading that will eventually replace the current system of anonymous and automatic order matching. The changes, announced late on Tuesday, went into operation on Wednesday. The yuan remains tied to a 0.3 per cent range on either side of a daily mid rate against the dollar. But whereas the mid rate has until now been the previous day’s close, allowing only very slow movement, it will now be the average quote of market makers — theoretically allowing a rise at the opening of trade each day.
— Reuters
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EPF rate: TUs meet today
New Delhi, January 4 “The trade unions will also discuss the government’s inordinate delay in in bringing in Parliament the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Bill and the poor implementation of labour laws in the country,” AITUC Secretary D.L. Sachdev told UNI. Media reports suggest that with the Finance ministry saying “no” to the maintenance of a 9.5 interest rate, the Labour Ministry is all set to notify the interest at 8.5 per cent.
— UNI
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PetroMin wants OVL to share more details
New Delhi, January 4 Sources said while OVL claimed that it preferred sending only a brief note in advance to avoid leakage of sensitive commercial information, the ministry says the short lead time was not sufficient to examine equity participation proposals. A proposal of the ministry states that the Empowered Committee of Secretaries’ decision-making process necessitates that “OVL provide sufficient information well in advance for the deliberations at the ECS meeting to be purposeful.”
— PTI
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Gold prices zoom
New Delhi, January 4 Gold prices climbed up by Rs 175 to Rs 7,930 per 10 gram in Kolkata, followed by Delhi and Chennai by Rs 170 and Rs 140 at Rs 7835 and Rs 7845 per 10 gram,
respectively. At Mumbai, gold quoted Rs 165 higher at Rs 7800 per 10 gram.
— PTI
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SEBI suspends 4 brokers
Mumbai, January 4
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