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Petrobras, banks plan $1.5 billion oil-service funds
RIO de JANEIRO /SAO PAULO
Petroleumworld.com, Feb 17, 2009Petroleo Brasileiro SA , three state banks and HSBC Holdings Plc will establish funds to finance Brazilian oil-service and equipment companies.
The funds are being set up in an effort to ease the impact of the global credit crunch on the builders of oil rigs and tankers and on suppliers of pumps, pipes and services such as seismic surveying, Petrobras Chief Financial Officer Almir Barbassa said today in an interview in Sao Paulo. The company will also be prepared to pay as much as 70 percent of its contracts with suppliers before deliveries, he said.
Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, needs the suppliers to help it meet a five-year, $174.4 billion investment plan aimed at increasing output 44 percent to 2.68 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent a day by 2013. Failure to get finance may prevent the suppliers from meeting their contracts with Petrobras.
In January Scorpion Offshore Ltd., a drilling service company, canceled plans to build a $700 million rig to be leased to Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras because it failed to secure financing.
Lack of funds also forced Scorpion to pull out of a contract to build a ship at Singapore's Keppel FELS Ltd. Shipyard to transport the rig, Scorpion's Chief Executive Officer Jon Cole said in a Jan. 13 interview. Petrobras agreed in July to lease the rig from Scorpion for $485,000 a day.
Caixa Economica Federal , as Brazil's state discount and housing bank is known, will create a fund of as much as 1.5 billion reais ($660 million) to take equity stakes in oil-service companies, Barbassa said.
Petrobras and the banks will create two funds of 1 billion reais to make loans to the oil-service and equipment industry, he said.
One of the loan funds will be backed by Petrobras, Brasil's state development bank, BNDES, and Banco do Brasil SA , another state-controlled bank. The other fund will be backed by Petrobras, BNDES, and HSBC.
Story by Jeb Blount and Heloiza Canassa from Bloomberg
- jblount@bloomberg.net ; hcanassa@bloomberg.net .
Bloomberg 02/16/2009
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