New Delhi, Feb. 26: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is unfazed by all the shenanigans of punters who have been clobbering the stocks of the six state-owned companies that are coming out with public issues to offload the government’s stake in them.

Yesterday, the government ordered the issue managers to drum up support for the public offers and sent out a veiled threat to punters who were hammering the stocks.

ONGC chairman Subir Raha, who kicked off the roadshow here for the biggest public issue in Indian corporate history today, said the company’s stock “is a very good buy for investors”.

Making a strong pitch for the sale of 142.6 million shares of ONGC that are being offloaded, Raha said the company’s prospects looked bright with crude output expected to go up to 32 million tonnes in 2004-05 — a two-million tonne increase over 30 million tonnes that the company will be producing in 2003-04.

Lead managers to the book-built issue — Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Kotak Mahindra — said they would hold talks with big investors and give a feedback to the government on the stock price band. The floor price will be announced on March 4, a day before the bid opens.

They claimed that the recent fluctuations in the stock market were not likely to have a bearing on the price, which would be based on the strong fundamentals of the company. “Besides, there have been no major fluctuations in the ONGC stock in recent days,” they added.

The ONGC share closed at Rs 701.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, up from Rs 670.25 on Wednesday.

Raha said the redevelopment of the Mumbai High fields had started yielding results and oil recovery had risen to 30 per cent of the in-place reserves compared with 28 per cent earlier.

During the current year, the company will be producing 26 million tonnes of oil from its domestic fields, 1 million tonnes from the joint venture fields and 3 million tonnes from its 25 per cent stake in the Greater Nile oilfield in Sudan.

The ONGC chief said the company was expanding in the downstream sector as well with the acquisition of Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd.