Recovery on Australian market continuing

Press, 6 February 1982, Page 16

Recovery on Australian market continuing

<The gloomy combination of rising interest rates and poor interim results from industrial stocks was strongly resisted by the Australian sharemarket yesterday.

Although . volumes were low, most blue-chip issues fared well, with MIM, BHP, Central Norseman, and the ANZ Bank registering noteable gains. Despite a 4.3 point drop in the Financial Times index in London overnight, traders here pushed up the market's main barometer, the allordinaries index, by two points to 549.5. The index has picked up 3.3 points during a week of bleak home and overseas news.

The metals measure made a healthy 4.4 jump, and the industrial sector climbed under a point; only a little more than SBM worth of shares was traded.

One bright spot in an otherwise quiet day’s business was a report that the Petrel No. 3 appraisal well, in offshore Northern Territory waters of the Bonaparte Gulf, had flowed more than 481,000 cubic metres of gas a aay and 180 barrels a day of 50 degree API gravity oil. Petrel No. 3 is undergoing tests in the known gas reserve area of the Timor Sea, to further evaluate the

possibility of gas being used by the Northern Territory administration to broaden Darwin's industrial base through gas generated electricity. This wekk the Tern No. 2 well, 60km south of the Petrel structure. flowed more than 417,000 cubic

metres of gas. Listed interests include AOD, with 15 per cent, and Offshore Oil, with 25 per cent. AOD failed to move from 150 c in Sydney but climed 5c in Melbourne. Offshore picked up a cent in both centres to 38c on light turnover.