London pre-open: Rally seen close to 100 points

4th Jan 2011 07:36

Big gains in the US overnight and a strong display in Asia this morning are set to give London a big lift first thing Tuesday.Futures prices indicate a 93-point gain for the FTSE 100 as traders return to their desks after their Christmas and New Year break.In company news, no frills airline easyJet is to exercise its option to take delivery of 15 Airbus A320 aircraft between 2012 and 2014. It has agreed new options over a further 33 A320 aircraft, while 20 of the A319 aircraft which easyJet had contracted to acquire from Airbus have been converted into orders for A320 aircraft. easyJet has the right to exercise the additional 33 options up to March 2013. The basic listed price of each A320 aircraft, as at December 2010, was about $73m, but easyJet has been granted substantial confidential price concessions by Airbus and the selected engine manufacturer.Cairn Energy has agreed a contract to tie-up two drilling vessels for its 2011 exploration programme offshore Greenland. Subject to approval from the government of Greenland, Cairn intends to drill up to four wells in 2011. Cairn has also entered into a stand-by secured revolving debt facility of $900m that will also provide funding for general corporate purposes. The firm has has had limited success so far with its Baffin Bay exploration programme. It last exploration well in the region, T4-1, turned up dry and followed a similar outcome for the T8-1 well, while drilling at Alpha-1S1 stopped at the end of September. Drilling at Desire Petroleum's 25/5-1 well on the Dawn/Jacinta prospect in the North Falkland Basin has reached target depth but failed to find any oil. "Based on preliminary drilling and wireline logging data there are no significant hydrocarbons in the Dawn prospect and the well will be plugged and abandoned with gas shows around 1,434 metres," said the company after drilling down 1,697 metres. The rig will now move to Rockhopper Exploration which will drill "one or two wells", subject to regulatory approval, before returning to Desire to drill a well at a location still to be finalised and subject to regulatory approval.Construction and engineering group Costain has been awarded a highways contract by Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council. The £59m contract is to construct 4.5 kilometres of dual carriageway access road from the M4 Junction 38 into Port Talbot and the docks, as well as completing the link to Junction 42 on the M4 and West Wales. The construction work is part of the Port Talbot Peripheral Distributor Road (PDR) project.