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MONEYMAKERS

left in the lurch: Enron Corp has withdrawn its plan to set up a US $ 6 billion hydroelectric-power project in Nepal. With this, the company's grand plan has been stalled for South Asia. Enron's decision to withdraw from the proposed 10,800 megawatt project clearly shows the wide ripple effects of economic turmoil elsewhere in Asia. The financial viability of the project has received a jolt after the forecasts of slower growth for China, a major market to which Enron had planned to suppy power from Nepal. This project would have been the largest foreign investment in South Asia.

power game: Convenant Energy and Infrastructure Group, a US-based holding company, has been granted industrial licence worth Rs 1,320 crore to set up six power projects in India. The six licences have been granted for projects in Kathua (Jammu & Kashmir), Mandi Govindgarh, Ludhiana, Nepani (Karnataka), port project (Tamil Nadu), and Okhla (New Delhi). According to Wilfred Watson Hamrum, chairperson of the company, the power will be supplied at the rate of Rs 4 crore per megawatt (mw). All the six projects would generate nearly 330 mw of power.

healthy deal: Technology Development Board (TDB), has decided to fund Ahmedabad-based Cadilla Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Gujarat Oleocham Ltd for the production of vaccine for leprosy and latter for manufacturing undecenoic acid from castor seeds. Gujarat Oleochem Ltd proposes to set-up a extraction plant. Cadilla will set up a one-million dosage capacity facility in Ahmedabad for making Leprovac, a therapeutic leprosy vaccine.

floating idea: Mobil Technology Company of Dallas, USA, has designed a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant. The plant is being considered as technically feasible, economical, safe and reliable. Mobil's world-scale plant design has a capacity of six million tonne per year of LNG. The plant would be located on a large square concrete barge. It will have a storage capacity for 250,000 cubic metres of LNG. Model tests have verified the stability of the structure: barge motions are low enough to permit the plant to continue operations in a worst storm scenario.

in the pipeline: Russia and Vietnam may soon approve a plan to build the Vietnam's first oil refinery. For this, a Russian company will join hands with a Vietnamese company, according to an official at the state-owned PetroVietnam. Do Van Ha, a spokesperson of the company said Russia's Zarubezhueft and PetroVietnam will each contribute 50 per cent of the US $1.3 billion needed to build the Dung Quat oil refinery. According to initial plans, the project will be completed in the year 2001. He also said that both sides are waiting for ratification by the two governments. So far, they have not come across any obstacles.

joining hands: DuPont's Conoco unit, a US based company, has formed a partnership with AO Lukoil, Russia's largest oil company, to jointly develop oil and natural-gas reserves covering480,000 hectares in Russia's northern Arctic region. Both the companies have also formulated a strategy for the development of the reserves, located in the Northern Territories of Russia's Timan Pechora region. The two companies estimate that the fields hold recoverable reserves of more than one billion barrels of oil and two trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

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