London pre-open: FTSE to fall as investors take a breather

17th Sep 2012 07:25

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open down 33 points from Friday's close of 5,916, when the index hit a six month high as markets reacted to the Federal Reserve announcement of further economic stimulus. Investors will be able to take a breather on Monday as it is set to be thin on corporate news, with interim results out from Iofina and Networkers Intl., and final results from Allergy Therapeutics. Making the headlines this past weekend, and with a possible impact on today´s trading, are the possible delays to the Eurozone´s plans for a banking union, as Germany calls for a more measured approach.Eurozone trade data is scheduled for release at 10:00.The average price of a home coming to market this September in the UK is £234,858, a mere 0.7% higher than a year earlier and 0.1% lower than in September 2007, according to property website Rightmove. Royal Dutch Shell has suffered a setback on its Alaska drilling programme, with the containment dome aboard the Arctic Challenger barge sustaining damage during a final test of the containment system. The time required to repair the dome, along with steps taken to protect local whaling operations and to ensure the safety of operations from ice flow movement, have led the oil giant to revise its plans for the 2012-2013 exploration programme.Anglo American Platinum - or Amplats - said it plans to reopen operations in Rustenburg after work was suspended last week to protect staff. The firm, which accounts for around 40% of global platinum supply, took the decision to stop operations in the area to protect the safety and security of its employees from "outside intimidation". Industrial relations in the South African mining sector remain on a knife edge a month after 44 people died during violent protests at Lonmin's Marikana project close to the Rustenburg area. FTSE-250 oil and gas company Ophir Energy has had three better-than-expected results in its drilling programme in block R, Equatorial Guinea. All three wells drilled exceeded pre-drilling recoverable resource estimates, the Africa-focused company revealed. As a result of test drilling on Fortuna West-1 (R6), the sixth gas discovery in block R, the total management estimate of Block R recoverable contingent resources (2C) has been lifted by more than 300% from the pre-2012 drilling programme estimate of 697bn cubic feet, which is 116m barrels of oil equivlent (mmboe), to 3.0trn cubic feet, or 500 mmboe.