The two-day-old indefinite strike by nearly one lakh powermen, including 10,000 engineers, of Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board (UPSEB) was called off on Wednesday unconditionally after talks between leaders of the striking employees and state power minister Naresh Agarwal. ``The withdrawal of the strike was unconditional'', Agarwal and office bearers of various unions of UPSEB said at a press conference in Lucknow. Agarwal said there would be no victimisation of the striking employees and they would be granted leave for the strike period. All the arrested UPSEB employees would be released and cases against them would be withdrawn, he said.

Petronet scouts for shipping lines to transport LNG:

Petronet LNG is looking at Japanese and Korean engineering majors to ship liquified natural gas (LNG) totalling 7.5 million tonnes every year to its project terminals at Dahej and Kochi. "We are talking to companies like Mitsui, Mitsubhishi, Daewoo, Hunjung andSamsung to select a company that could transport LNG from Qatar to our terminals," Petronet sources said.

State-owned Shipping Corporation is also a contender for this business. Asked about SCI's proposal to become a transporter for Petronet, chairman and managing director S C Mathur said, "SCI proposal is pending with us, we have not yet decided." "Along with that some other shipping lines including the Japanese firms are also being considered," Mathur said.

29 MNCs vie for Cuddalore mega power project:

As many as 29 multinational companies have evinced interest in bidding for the 1500 mw Cuddalore mega thermal power project proposed to be set up in Tamil Nadu. The notification of the bid invited by Powergrid Corporation of India had closed on February 8 and 29 international firms have purchased the requisite for qualification (RFQ) documents for the project, a Powergrid statement said in New Delhi on Wednesday. Bids for Cuddalore was invited in the backdrop of government's recent decision todevelop mega power projects with private sector participation, the statement said. A pre-qualification conference for appraising developers about the project and the shortlisting process would be held on Monday, it said. The southern states would be the beneficiaries of power from the project, it added.

Hydro-power potential of N-E largely untapped:

Only three per cent of the hydro-power potentials in the North-East, which accounts for country's 30 per cent reserves, estimated about 48,000 mw, has been harnessed so far. "Although this (48,000 mw) constitutes 30 per cent of the total reserves in India, less than three per cent of this has been harnessed so far and there is an immediate need to develop this huge power potential not only for the benefit of the region but for the rest of the country," official sources said in Guwahati on Wednesday. There was also a considerable thermal power potential in the region, they said adding the inexhaustible source of hydel power could accelerate developmentand help the loss-making state electricity boards in the region recover. Power generation efforts have suffered due to northeast's strategic border and insurgency, the sources said. Search for oil in Bengal to resume shortly: Search for oil and gas will be resumed in West Bengal after a gap of about 10 years, with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) identifying eight oilfields in the state for exploration. Announcing this at a Trinamool Congress rally in Calcutta, Union petroleum and natural gas minister V Ramamurthy said on Wednesday that the ONGC had been asked to commence exploration within three months. "We have instructed the ONGC to treble its activities in 48 oilfields all over the country," he said. In what is seen as an attempt to appease the Trinamool Congress chief, Ramamurthy said the Centre had also decided to expand the Haldia refinery and increase the capacity of the existing LPG refilling centres in the state.

IOR trade summit today:

The Indian Ocean Rim Business Centre(IORBC) is holding an IOR trade summit from Thursday kickstarting a series of events focussing on trade and investment related issues in the region during the week. The summit is being organised by the Ficci. IORBC is a project undertaken by India and established in Ficci with support from the ministry of external affairs. The IOR Association for Region Cooperation (IORARC) charter lays emphasis on economic cooperation among the member states and the iorbc plays a significant role towards this end. According to a ficci study prepared for the trade summit, the combined global trade by IORARC countries nearly doubled between 1990 and 1997. However, the share of the IORARC-countries in worldwide trade, though rising, is still small in comparsion major trading blacks. The structure of trade in the region is characterised by uneven spread among member-countries, wherein more than three-fourths of the group's world trade are undertaken by only four nations. The degree of intra-regional trade within the IORARC isrelatively low at around 20 per cent. Low level of intra-regional trade implies that the member-nations have not been able to take full advantage of the existing complementarities.