London pre-open: Buyers to dominate early action

26th Jan 2011 07:34

A late recovery on Wall Street last night and mixed performance in Asia looks like propelling London in the right direction this morning.A stronger than expected US consumer confidence report and some decent company results helped the Dow Jones erase most of its earlier losses, ending just 3 points adrift. It had been down over 80 at one stage.Futures prices point to an early gain of around 30 points for London.In company news, accountancy software group Sage's first quarter was in line with expectations flagged at last month's full-year numbers, keeping up the momentum in revenue growth seen in the second half. In a brief statement, it said results for each of its regions matched forecasts. Net debt at the end of 2010 fell to £187m from £219.8m at 30 September.BG Group has made a new discovery of light oil in Block BM-S-9 in the Santos Basin, offshore Brazil. The discovery well 3-BRSA-861-SPS, informally known as Carioca North-East, is located in a water depth of 2,151 metres, approximately 275km off the coast of São Paulo state and 9km north-east of the original Carioca discovery well. BG, with a 30% interest in the block, said drilling had confirmed the presence of light oil. Oil and gas firm Heritage has uncovered what it believes is one of the largest gas fields in Iraq. Following completion of the deepening and testing of the Miran West-2 well in Kurdistan, management estimates that the Miran West structure has P90 - P50 (90% - 50% likely) gross in-place volumes of gas of between 6.8 - 9.1 trillion cubic feet (TCF) with 42-71 million barrels (MMbbls) of condensate and 53- 75 MMbbls of oil. The P10 (10% probability) upside has been estimated at 12.3 TCF.Water supplier United Utilities has been trading in line with expectations since October, with regulated revenue slightly higher than anticipated. Though regulated revenue has been better than anticipated, it is likely to be lower in the second half of the company's financial year to end-March than in the first half because of seasonal fluctuations.