Vienna  - The price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) remained stable, hovering just below 119 dollars, OPEC said on Thursday.

One barrel (159 litres) of crude produced by OPEC's 13 member states stood at 118.78 dollars on Wednesday, compared with 118.76 dollars the previous day.

OPEC calculates an average basket price based on 13 important brands produced by cartel members. (dpa)

Everest Kanto Cylinder Ltd. (EKC), manufacturer of industrial and CNG cylinders, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary in China, EKC Industries (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., has successfully completed the trial production phase and has commenced commercial production.

The plant will have an initial capacity of 200,000 cylinders and company plans to increase its capacity to one million cylinders in the next 3-4 years. The investment in the first phase of its operation is expected to be around US$ 50 million.

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong has saved the equivalent of 70 million kilowatt hours a year by turning down the air conditioning in government buildings, officials announced Wednesday.

Government departments were ordered in 2004 to turn down the city's notoriously icy indoor air conditioning to 25.5 degrees Celsius to save energy in the high-rise city of
6.9 million.

The result of the energy-saving move, legislators were told Wednesday, was that power usage in the affected buildings fell from 2,190 million kilowatt hours in 2004-2005 to
2,120 million kilowatt hours in 2006-2007.

Vienna  - The price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was down 89 cents on Tuesday, OPEC said on Wednesday.

One barrel (159 litres) of crudes from OPEC's 13-brand reference basket stood at 118.76 dollars on Tuesday, compared with 119.65 dollars the previous day.

The drop came despite remarks by OPEC-member Iran that it considered reducing its output.

OPEC calculates an average basket price based on 13 important brands produced by cartel members. (dpa)

Indian Public Sector Gas major GAIL India Ltd has registered a net profit before tax at Rs 1,098 crore in the fourth quarter of 2007-08, against Rs 546 crore for the corresponding period in 2006-07.

The profit before tax during the year 2007-08 rose 35% to Rs 3,855 crore from Rs 2,860 crore in 2006-07.

GAIL also plans to invest Rs 3,410 crore ($810 million) during financial year 2008-09 in pipeline project, petroleum chemicals, business development, projects related to telecom, and city gas among others.

Further it also plans to buy five to six liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes from the spot market in the last quarter of fiscal 2008/09 for its Dabhol power plant.

Vienna  - The price for crude produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continued its steep climb, hovering close to the 120-dollar mark, OPEC said on Tuesday.

One barrel (159 litres) of crude produced by OPEC member states stood at 119.71 dollars on Monday, compared with 119.13 dollars on Friday.

The Vienna-based OPEC secretariat calculates an average basket price based on 13 important brands produced by cartel members. (dpa)

Oslo - Record-high oil and gas prices helped boost Norwegian energy giant Statoil Hydro's first-quarter earnings to new highs, the group said Tuesday.
Net income was 16 billion kroner (3.15 billion dollars), up 61 per cent on the corresponding business quarter in 2007.

Turnover increased 33 per cent to 157.69 billion kroner, the group said.

"We deliver a good first quarter result characterized by solid production in a market with high oil and gas prices," Statoil Hydro chief executive Helge Lund said in a statement.

The group was created in October with the merger between Norwegian oil and gas groups Statoil and Norsk Hydro.

Karvy Stock Broking Limited has maintained ‘Buy’ rating on Cairn India stock with an intraday target of Rs 308.

According to Karvy, day traders can purchase the stock between Rs 300-302 with a strict stop loss of Rs 298. If the stock market remains on positive track, the next target for the day will be above Rs 310.

Shares of the company, on Monday (May 12), closed at Rs 302.95 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The total volume of shares traded at the BSE was 8946070. The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 306 and a low of Rs 133.3 on BSE.

In order to meet up the shortage of coal at its power plants in India, NTPC is looking to acquire majority stakes in Indonesian coal mines having reserves of around 200-300 million tons.

The deal is likely to finalize by the end of the existing fiscal, ending Mar. 31, 2009.

R S Sharma, chairman and managing director of NTPC, said that the company has already nominated three merchant bankers for the purpose.

But Mr. Sharma declined to give the names of the bankers and other details.

The RPG group-owned company, Phillips Carbon Black Ltd has informed that it has formed a joint venture with subsidiaries of Vietnam National Chemical Corp. (Vinachem) for the set up of a carbon black facility of 1,00,000 MT and co-generation power plant of 16MW in Vietnam.

The companies signed a memorandum of understanding for a feasibility study on a carbon black facility last July. The plant will be the first of its kind in Vietnam.

Separately, Phillips Carbon Black is also looking at hiking carbon-black prices by 15 percent.

In the back drop of depletion of Helium availability throughout the world, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Limited has launched a pilot project in order to extract helium from Natural Gas by making use of a four-stage pressure swing adsorption technique for the first time in India.

The project, launched at Kuthalam near Mayiladuturai in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu, is an important step towards the objective of assimilating new technology to make India self- reliant in helium.

Coal India subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL), which operates mines in Jharkhand and West Bengal, will invest Rs 1200 crore. The company plans to spend the amount on buying equipment used in all our operative mines across the two states, as part of its revival strategy.

BCCL has set a target of producing 26.5 million tonnes (MT) of coking coal in the current financial year and will further increase the production volume to 30 MT by 2011-12.

Vienna - The price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continued its record-breaking climb towards the end of the week, OPEC said on Friday.

One barrel (159 litres) of crudes from OPEC's reference basket stood at 116.93 dollars on Thursday, up 90 cents from the previous day.

On Thursday, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salam el-Badri said current high prices were not connected to market fundamentals, as markets remained well supplied.

India's state-run petrochemicals company, Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), is all set to supply 2,50,000 tons of diesel to Iran over the next eight months, replacing Reliance Industries, a top company official stated. MRPL is a subsidiary of ONGC and has been one of the favorite madcap stocks for traders for the past few months.

This winter Iran was forced to buy diesel from as far a field as Singapore after Reliance Industries, stopped supplies when its bankers refused to confirm letter of credit raised by Iran's central bank. This happened as a result of increasing Western pressure over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Vienna - The price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continued its record-breaking climb, the Vienna-based OPEC secretariat said on Thursday.

One barrel (159 litres) of OPEC crudes stood at 116.03 dollars on Wednesday, a new all-time high. The price rose by 1.28 dollars compared with the previous day.

According to OPEC analysts JBC in Vienna, crude supply concerns should have lifted to some extent, as ExxonMobil returned to its normal production levels of around 800,000 barrels per day in Nigeria after a strike.

Vienna - The price for crudes produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) jumped to a new record high on Tuesday, the Vienna-based OPEC secretariat said on Wednesday.

One barrel (159 litres) of crude from OPEC's 13-brand reference basket stood at 114.75 dollars on Tuesday, up 3.15 dollars from the previous day. On Monday, crude prices jumped by almost five dollars.

OPEC calculates an average basket price based on 13 important brands produced by its member states. The 13-member cartel is responsible for about 40 per cent of the global crude output. (dpa)

Vienna  - In one of the biggest jumps in recent years, the price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has surged by
4.61 dollars, OPEC said on Tuesday.

One barrel (159 litres) of crude from OPEC's reference basket stood at 111.6 dollars on Monday, compared with 106.99 dollars the previous day. The new quotation was just shy of OPEC's all-time high of 111.66 dollars.

OPEC crude prices followed Nymex WTI and ICE Brent, which both set new record highs on Monday.

Jakarta  - Indonesia, OPEC's only member in the Asia-Pacific, is considering quitting the cartel because the country has become a net oil importer, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Tuesday.

"Indonesia at this stage is no longer an oil exporter," Yudhoyono said in opening remarks at a conference attended by provincial governors and regency heads.

GMR Energy Ltd, the wholly owned energy arm of infrastructure major GMR Group, is planning to raise Rs 4,000 crore through public offer and private equity placements to fund its expansion programmes in India and overseas.

The company had earlier planned to raise Rs 2,000 crore through an IPO, but it was deferred due to volatile market conditions.

GMR Energy is valued at US$5 billion and the company is planning to offload 10% equity through IPO. The part of the proceeds may be used to fund the group's possible foray into ultra mega power projects.

Berlin - Delivery of pipes for a controversial new gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea begins this week, although the project has yet to win clearance from several nations with Baltic coasts.

The Nord Stream line, the biggest pipeline project ever in the Baltic, is to carry Russian gas to a distribution point in Germany. Poland, Sweden and other nations have voiced opposition to it.

A train is to arrive on Tuesday in Sassnitz, a small German port, with the first load of about 100 steel pipes for the 1,220-kilometre pipeline. Construction is to begin soon of a plant in Sassnitz to coat the 60,000 sections with up to 11 centimetres of concrete.