London pre-open: Footsie heading higher

3rd Mar 2011 07:43

Blue chips are expected to get off to a pretty good start Thursday as oil prices ease back and Asian stocks post gains this morning.US light crude for April delivery is currently trading down $1.02 at $101.21 a barrel. Rebels seem to be having some success fighting off Colonel Gaddafi's forces in Libya.Futures prices indicate a 28-point lead for London first thing.In company news, insurer Aviva ramped up profits by 35% in 2010, helped by cost cutting, and had a record year in the UK. The firm, which has 19m customers in Britain, posted a profit before tax of £2.44bn, up from £1.81bn in 2009. Operating earnings jumped 26% to £2.55bn. It was a record result for the UK life business where operating profits grew 26% to £850m and strength in annuities and core life protection drove market share up again to 11.1%.Defence firm Cobham's profits in 2010 were hurt by delays in orders in the US and the company sees continuing difficulties this year as the world's only superpower seeks to rein in spending following the financial crisis. Statutory pre-tax profit in 2010 fell to £189m from £245m on revenues up to £1.8bn from £1.75bn. But stripping out one-offs, profit grew to £306m from £295m.Oil and gas firm Tullow Oil hailed an "exceptional result" on its drilling of the Enyenra-2A appraisal well, in the Deepwater Tano licence offshore Ghana. Drilling successfully encountered oil in excellent quality sandstone reservoirs, with solid evidence of communication with the Owo-1 well, which confirms that the Owo oil discovery, now renamed Enyenra, is a major light oil field.Oil firm SOCO International said drilling of the four development wells in Block 16-1 in the Cuu Long Basin offshore Vietnam has been completed, and the early signs look promising. The wells, tagged TGT-4P to 7P, were drilled in "batch" mode, rather than drilled separately in sequence. Preliminary analysis indicates that the wells have confirmed the reservoir model.