London pre-open: No end to rally

Blue chips are seen gaining ground early on after last night's late charge on Wall Street, targeting a sixth consecutive day of gains.Futures prices point to an 18-point rise for London at the start of play following a 50-point jump for the Dow Jones overnight and a modest advance in the Far East today.BP's bill for cleaning up after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has hit $8bn (£5.2bn), up over £1bn in less than a month, and the relief well is not expected to intercept the broken MC252 well for a couple of weeks. It's spent the money on the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, the "static kill" operations and claims. When the company updated on 9 August, the disaster had cost it a mere $6bn (£3.9bn). The relief well is at a measured depth of 17,909 feet and, depending upon weather conditions, is expected to hit the original well in the middle of this month.Soco has plugged and abandoned its first wildcat exploration drilling well at Nganga 1 (NGA-1) in the Nganzi Block, onshore the Democratic Republic of Congo, after hitting water. Soco said that the well encountered approximately 500 metres of source rock with significant hydrocarbon shows and approximately 245 metres of good quality porous sand, but an assessment of the results indicated these sands are water bearing, the statement added.HSBC has joined other banks in warning it could leave the UK if the Commission on Banking recommends the break-up of the country's major banks. In much more explicit comments that its rivals, Stuart Gulliver, the head of HSBC's investment banking business and a possible future chief executive of the bank, told a conference yesterday it could leave London if ordered to split its investment bank from its retail lending operations.