Gujarat Petroleum makes country's biggest gas find
Ahmedabad: The Gujarat Petroleum Corp (GSPC) has made the country's biggest gas discovery, of 20 trillion cubic feet, worth $50 billion, off the southeast coast of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat's chief minister has announced.

The find was made in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin at an offshore deep-sea well 6 km off the Yanam Kakinada coast in Andhra Pradesh.

"The team of GSPC experts detected gas around in the first week of June, 2005, after intensive drilling up to 5,061 metres into the seabed at a temperature of 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 Celsius)," Chief Minister, Narendra Modi told reporters.

India's biggest gas find until now -- 14 trillion cubic feet -- is also in the KG basin, being developed by Reliance Industries and due to start producing by August, 2008. GSPC plans to invest 15 billion rupees ($345 million) exploring the KG basin. It is also developing a block with Canada's Geoglobal Resources and Jubilant Enpro.

GSPC stuck oil in an exploration block in the west last year, with estimated reserves of 50 million tonnes.

India's recent major discoveries added 4.4 billion barrels of hydrocarbon reserves in the past two years.
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Tata Motors investments to total Rs.6,000 crore by 2009
New Delhi: Auto major Tata Motors has said that it will be investing up to Rs6,000 crore by 2008-09 in product development and capital expenditure.

"The funds raised from the international offerings have been partly utilised for refinancing the acquisition of Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Co and on-going product development and capital programmes, expected to aggregate approximately Rs6,000 crore over the period 2004-05 to 2008-09," the company said adding in the interim, it has parked abroad $244 million remaining unutilised funds as deposits with banks.

Tatas, who expect a slowdown in demand for commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles, plan to tackle this by augmenting product offerings.

"The domestic commercial vehicle industry sales, which is growing year-after-year for the past three years in succession, is susceptible to a slowdown due to its cyclical nature. The company plans to counter this cyclicality through entry into newer geographies and by entering new segments like the recent launch of a small commercial vehicle 'Tata ace'," Tata Motors informed shareholders in the annual report for 2004-05.

The company said the passenger vehicle market is likely to slow down further compared with the previous year, but still maintain leading growth rates among the various automobile markets.

The Chairman of the company, Ratan Tata, said the company will also need to differentiate itself by developing products designed to meet the needs of the vast and growing 'lower segments in the pyramid', in addition of the product range it sells currently. "The recently-introduced mini-truck and the new low-end car being developed by the company are amongst such initiatives," he said.
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Anil Ambani takes over at Infocomm with new team
Mumbai: Anil Ambani today took over the reins at Reliance Infocomm with the telecom major's board, accepting the resignation of Mukesh as founder-chairman and five other directors.

Anand Jain, Manoj Modi, Bharat Goenka, Y. P. Trivedi and M. P. Modi made their way out while Anil nominees, chartered accountant Gautam Doshi and IIM Bangalore professor J. Ramachandran, have joined the team.

Anil addressed the 40,000 Infocomm staff through a webcast to focus on "profitable growth and creating value for customers".

Infocomm has grabbed 21 per cent of the mobile telephony market. Anil has been preparing the ground for his takeover of the group's telecom company. Last week, he met communications and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran. In the past, he has held talks with the Trai chief.
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Great Eastern Hotel sale clears union hurdles
Kolkata: The firm stand adopted by the West Bengal govt. on the privatisation of Great Eastern Hotel has paid off, with the opposing labour unions in the Left Front-ruled state accepting the plan and the employee separation package offered by the West Bengal government.

Having realised that the government would not back out this time from privatising the state-owned PSU Great Eastern Hotel, most employees agreed to accept the separation package.

Only the Left Front union CITU were still insisting on negotiations for better terms of settlement. INTUC leader Subrata Mukherjee said employees affiliated to his body in the Great Eastern Hotel had accepted the improved settlement package.

INTUC, as the major trade union in the hotel, had sought three concessions - redeployment of young employees, inclusion of career advancement scheme in the early retirement scheme offered and some extra payment under the voluntary early retirement scheme (ERS) option.

The government had accepted these points and employees in response would consider the offer favourably.

In a parallel development, the West Bengal government has asked all nine bidders for a meeting.

The bidders include ITC Hotels, Sinclairs and some foreign hotel chains. June 30 was the last date for the ERS.
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