North American markets will likely open mixed Wednesday morning, as oil prices climb and investors react to news of a merger of Noranda Inc. with Falconbridge Ltd., a major nickel and copper producer that it already controls.

Falconbridge stockholders would receive 1.77 Noranda shares for each Falconbridge share they tender. Falconbridge’s stock market value exceeds $7 billion.

Crude-oil prices rose US29¢ to US$54.88 a barrel in early trading Wednesday, after a blast of winter weather hit the Northeast and drove up demand for heating oil.

Traders now are awaiting weekly petroleum-inventory data from the Energy Department and the American Petroleum Institute, expected at 10:30 ET.. Analysts expect crude inventories to have risen 1.75 million barrels to 301.15 million barrels in the week ended March 4.

Late today, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s “beige book” report, slated for release at 14:00 ET.

Here at home, Statistics Canada said prices for new homes edged up in January while the 12-month rate of increase was down marginally.

StatsCan said the price of new homes rose 0.2% on a monthly basis, which was the same monthly rate of change as observed in December 2004.

In other business news, Oracle ignited a possible bidding war with software rival SAP for the acquisition of Retek, making an unsolicited offer of US$524 million, nearly US$30 million more than an offer SAP has announced.

Gold stocks kept the Toronto stock market in the black on Tuesday, while a disappointing earnings update from Texas Instruments Inc. and oil prices rising past US$55 per barrel pushed U.S. markets lower.

At close, the S&P/TSX composite index was up 17.25 points or 0.17% to 9,903.34 and the junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index was down 21.90 points or 1.07% at 2,018.39.

Volume on the S&P/TSX composite was 356.4 million vs 111.1 million on Monday.

Wall Street’s Dow Jones industrial average lost 24.24 points or 0.22% to 10,912.62. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index slid 16.66 points or 0.8% at 2,073.55, while the S&P 500 index gave up 5.88 points or 0.48% to 1,219.43.

The Canadian dollar was up more than a full U.S. cent in late trading as another bout of turbulence hit the American currency. The loonie was up 1¢ to US82.36¢ — after going as high as 82.41 cents. The greenback continues to fall from favour in the wake of last Friday’s February U.S. payrolls report – and ahead of the latest data of the U.S. trade deficit due out on Friday.