LIVE CATTLE RALLY AS LOCKOUT AT MEAT PLANT ENDS Live cattle futures posted a robust rally today after a major beef packing company said it would end a lockout at its slaughtering plant in Dakota City, Neb. April delivery cattle on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange closed at 64.45 cents a pound, up 0.83 cent, as the market expected demand for live animals to increase as the plant restarts operations. Iowa Beef Processors, a division of Occidental Petroleum, said it planned to reopen the plant, one of the largest in the nation, on March 16. The plant has been closed since Dec. 14, the day after a contract between IBP and Local 222 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union expired. The plant employs 2,800 workers and can slaughter several thousand animals a day, a company spokesman said. The company said it locked out union workers because they threatened to disrupt operations. It was unclear whether union meatpackers would return to work. They rejected the company's latest contract offer March 5. Traders said cattle prices advanced at midsession as rumors circulated that the lockout was ending, and gains were further fueled by a noticeable increase in demand for live animals on cash markets in Nebraska and the Texas Panhandle. The rally in cattle also boosted values of live hogs and frozen pork bellies, which also were supported by indications that producers were expanding their hog herds at a slower rate than previously expected. Petroleum futures posted a modest rally on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But a report that the Soviet Union planned to reduce the price of its crude oil exports may pressure the market Friday, said Nauman Barakat, petroleum analyst in New York with Smith Barney, Harris Upham and Co. Buying by companies that deal in petroleum helped prices recover from early weakness, traders said. Gold futures rallied, partly in response to strength in the silver market, on the Commodity Exchange in New York. Silver prices rallied after a U.S. brokerage house recommended its customers buy the metal, traders said. Coffee futures drifted lower in response to a report that Colombia lowered the price of its exports, traders said. Sugar prices closed slightly higher on the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange despite a large export sale by the European Commission on Wednesday. Soybeans were higher, wheat lower and corn mixed on the Chicago Board of Trade. Soybeans were boosted by expectations that the Agriculture Department would report a healthy signup for the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to leave highly erodible land idle instead of planting a crop, traders said. Concern that a strike by Brazilian seamen might interrupt exports of soybeans from Brazil, where the harvest is just beginning, also underpinned prices, they said. Wheat prices were pressured by selling in response to trends on price charts, they said.