Stock Watch

Owner of Energy giant Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani has put in an extra 0.68% in EIH Ltd. With this, his total stake in the hotel chain has increased to 14.8%. In a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange, EIH said that the shares were purchased from the market on Tuesday.

Shares of Reliance surged 0.3% at Rs. 939.3 in proportion to the Mumbai market at 1.26pm, while EIH shares witnessed a 4.5% rise at Rs. 150.2.

On Monday, Reliance was quoted saying that it is widening its horizon and has procured 14.12% stake in EIH for a sum of $217.5 million.

On Monday, NTPC, the largest electricity producer of India announced that it is planning to purchase stakes in two Indonesian coal mines in the current financial year, so as to increase the supply of coal to its plants.

R. S. Sharma, Chairman and Managing Director of NTPC stated that the two Indonesian coal mines are located in East Kalimanthan and Sumatra, which the Company wants to have stakes in; with that its coal supplies will reach to

Today, Sterlite Energy (SEL), which is part of Vedanta Resources plc., has been given approval for installing its first thermal power plant of 4 x 600-mega watt (Mw) in Jharsuguda, Orissa.

In the next one year, the Company is preparing to install three more power projects worth Rs 10,500 crore at an interval of three months each.

The 2,400 MW power project is slated to be completed in the fiscal year 2011-12. And once the project will be completed, the power project will be capable of meeting the power needs of the whole state.

Cairn PLC, which owns 62.36% in Cairn India, is reported to be in plans to sell 51% of its stake to Vedanta, under a deal worth $ 8.48 bn. The price offered under the deal is claimed to be of Rs. 355 per share.

However, besides that Vedanta is also reported to be paying Cairn an additional amount of Rs. 50 per share in name of non-compete fee. The controversial part here is that none of the minority shareholders will have a share in it.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd., India’s public sector oil marketing firm, said that it had struck an accord with the Australian energy major, Norwest Energy, for acquirement of Shale Gas estate in the Perth Basin.

In the later trading session announcement, the firm informed BPCL, via its 100% subsidiary that it has executed a memo of intent with an ASX listed firm, Norwest Energy, for farming into two searching estates in the Perth Basin EP413 and TP/15, which posses shale gas potential.

While one cannot show its back to the fact that CNG as a fuel option is very much clean and green in nature apart from being economical to the consumer but the unavailability of the alternative fuel has caused a lot of trouble in the past.

However, going forward, L. Mansingh, chairman, Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has recently said that the Government is planning to set up compressed natural gas (CNG) stations along all the highways in the country in the next three years.

Oil exploring companies, drilling for oil and gas in various oil blocks, have been granted a time span of three years more for continuing their operations in a meeting of the cabinet committee of economic affairs chaired by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

The firms including ONGC, ENI of Italy and Reliance Industries, have assured to do exemplary work in the coming period for making the country rich in energy. The firms remained fail to meet their contractual obligation in the 30 oil blocks awarded to them by the ministry.

Following the regime of free pricing that will kick start next week oil firms owned by the state might end up revising the prices of petrol every fortnight to reflect the global prices of oil. Last month, the prices of petrol were freed from the control of the government which resulted in a hike of 3.50 rupees in petrol rates in Delhi. However, modalities of retail price adjustments subsequently will be left to the industry to decide after deliberation.

On Thursday the Cabinet committee on economic affairs allowed three more years to companies that have been drilling for oil and gas. This time has been awarded to them due to their commitment to carry on with the exploratory work.

The whole idea is for compensating for the time lost in activities of the proposed work due to the absence of deep water rigs or drilling platforms as many countries speeded up their oil exploration to save the increasing energy costs since 2007.

The state owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited has positioned a second round of 25.5 MW volume wind power order with Suzlon Energy, which is known as the world's third largest craftsman of the wind power turbines.

The wind power project order which been initiated by the HPCL is based at Akal in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The project entails approximately 17 units of Suzlon's S82 - 1.5 MW wind turbines which is kept in the list for the upcoming commissioning round by the Q3 of FY 2010-11.