OFF-SHORE OIL-DRILLING, OBAMA, SOROS, PETROBRAS: CONNECTING THE DOTS

U.S. Ready to Finance Oil Drilling in Brazil

EFE News Services 8/5/2009

The U.S. government is prepared to provide up to $10 billion in loans to finance the development of massive hydrocarbon reserves off Brazil’s coast, a Brazilian official said Wednesday.

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, discussed the matter with officials this week during a visit to the South American country, Brazilian Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo da Silva told reporters.

He said the U.S. Export-Import Bank already has signed a letter of intent in that regard with Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

The loan is equal in value to a similar credit line agreed to with the China Development Bank, also for exploiting Brazil’s "pre-salt" area, so-named because the estimated 80 billion barrels of high-quality crude in that new oil frontier lie far beneath the ocean floor under layers of rock and an unstable salt formation.

Under the agreement with the Chinese state bank, finalized during Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s visit to Beijing in May, Brazil can repay the loan facility with oil as opposed to cash…

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Soros hedge fund invests $811m to buy Petrobras stake

August 15, 2008

London: Billionaire investor George Soros bought an $811 million stake in Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) in the second quarter, making the Brazilian state-controlled oil company his investment fund’s largest holding.

As of June 30, the stake in Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based oil producer is known, made up 22 per cent of the $3.68 billion of stocks and American depositary receipts held by Soros Fund Management, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Petrobras has since slumped 28 per cent…

In November, Petrobras announced the discovery of Tupi, a field with as much as 8 billion barrels of reserves, making it the largest find in the Americas since 1976.

“Petrobras has something that other oil companies don’t have: oil – lots of it and they’re going to find more,” said Ricardo Kob-ayashi, equity fund manager with UBS Pactual in Rio de Janeiro…

Tupi is part of a new deepwater offshore region known as the pre-salt that may contain as much as 50 billion barrels, according to Peter Wells, oil analyst with the UK’s Neftex Petroleum Consultants.

The drop in Petrobras’ US-traded common shares since June 30 would have reduced the value of Soros’s disclosed stake by $235 million.

Source Link:
[link to sweetness-light.com]

Petrobras Earmarks $224B for 2010-2014 Strategic Plan


The board of Petroleo Brasileiro approved the company's $224 billion investment plan over the next five years, Petrobras said Monday.

The federal oil company's investment budget comes above the high end of the $200 billion to $220 billion guidance that was released earlier this year. Petrobras earmarked investments of $174.4 billion in the previous five-year plan covering the 2009-2013 period.

The ambitious investment budget for the 2010-2014 period means Petrobras remains one of the few major oil companies willing to invest heavily amid lower oil prices and global economic uncertainty, while also shrugging off technical concerns raised in the wake of BP's deepwater disaster in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico

[link to www.rigzone.com]

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