ONGC hit its all-time high of Rs 409.70 in morning trades today encouraged by the company's receipt of crude from an investment in Sudan.

But by 11:30 IST, the scrip of ONGC eased slightly to Rs 405, still over yesterday's close by 4.15%. Over 1.33 lakh ONGC shares were registered as volumes on BSE by then. The scrip has been upbeat all through since the commencement of this month, rising 15% from Rs 352.55 on 2 May 2003.

Bargain hunting seems to be the dominant factor on the counter of late. Players are following a chain action, shifting funds from software stocks to banking and auto ancillary stocks and now to ONGC.

On Thursday, the state-run oil and gas explorer announced that it will commence retailing automotive fuels from its own petrol stations by the end of 2003. The largest Indian company in terms of market capitalisation has already secured a licence from the Government of India to set up 600 petrol pumps in four states including Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The first petrol pump will come up in Mangalore in a couple of months time.

Yesterday, itself, ONGC received its first consignment of 80,000 metric tonnes of Nile Blend crude from the Greater Nile Oil Project in Sudan at ONGC's refinery at Mangalore. ONGC had only recently acquired a substantial stake in the Sudanese oil exploring company.

Some market players reckon that the ONGC scrip has received a boost following speculation over a voluminous dividend and impressive results. Already, ONGC has declared an interim dividend of Rs 17 per share. Players expect the full dividend for FY 2002-03 to be around Rs 23-24 per share.

ONGC's financial performance has been impressive of late. For the third quarter ended 31 December 2002, ONGC recorded an 84% rise in net profit to Rs 2,593.47 crore (Rs 1,409.66 crore) on a 35% increase in net sales to Rs 7,604.99 crore (Rs 5,640.58 crore).

In April 2003, the company announced the discovery of substantial oil reserves west of the Vasai gas field, off the Bombay coast. The Vasai West find is estimated to contain 240 million barrels of in-place oil plus oil-equivalent gas. The company also reported another find at Laipling-gaon in the northeastern state of Assam. Even by preliminary estimates, 100 million barrels of in-place oil plus oil-equivalent of gas are believed to be held in the Laipling-gaon discovery.

With this, ONGC has made six recent new discoveries - Vasai West (oil and gas) on the western offshore, GS-49 (gas) and GS-KW (oil and gas) on the Krishna Godavari offshore, Chinnewala Tibba (gas) in Rajasthan, Laipling-gaon (oil and gas) and Banamali (oil) both in Assam. At Chinnewala Tibba, testing has indicated the presence of sweet gas with more than 7,000 Kcal/m calorific value, against the usual range of 1,250 to 3,100 Kcal/m in other gas finds in Rajasthan.

ONGC's crude production in 2002-03 crossed the 26-million-tonne mark, an increase of 1.3 million tonnes over the production in 2001-02. The increase came mainly from ONGC's prime asset, the Mumbai High field, following re-development projects launched in 2001.

As on 31 March 2003, government of India held 84.11% stake in ONGC, while the public and institutions held 1.2% and 2.62%, respectively.

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