MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Petrobras planning to issue 60 billion US dollars of new stock

Minister Edison Lobao said Petrobras has “no funding problems”

Brazil’s government managed oil company Petrobras will issue as much as 60 billion US dollars of new stock, most of which will go to the government in exchange for oil rights, Energy Minister Edison Lobao announced Tuesday.

“Petrobras has no funding problems” Lobao told reporters in Sao Paulo. He said the company will issue between 40 billion and 60 billion of new stock. “The share sale will help us to diversify our funding sources”.

President Lula da Silva sought to boost state control over Petrobras and deepwater oil deposits after the company discovered the Americas’ largest oil find in more than three decades. Under legislation proposed by Lula da Silva, Brazil’s government is seeking to swap 5 billion barrels of oil in the pre-salt region for Petrobras shares.

Petrobras is spending 174.4 billion USD in the five years through 2013 as it prepares to tap the offshore fields. The company’s Tupi field, the biggest discovery since Mexico’s Cantarell since 1976, may hold as much as 8 billion barrels of oil, Petrobras has said.

Lobao said the Senate will likely approve the oil-rights transfer within two months, allowing Petrobras to sell shares by the end of June.

Lobao’s estimate tops previous forecasts Luciano Coutinho president of Brazil’s state development bank, known as BNDES, said March 3 that Petrobras may raise 35 to 40 billion USD.

Credit Suisse, in a February 10 note to clients, forecast the share sale to reach as much as 50 billion. About 30 billion of the stock would go to the government in exchange for the oil with the rest offered to minority shareholders, according to Credit Suisse.

In related news energy giant Petrobras said on Tuesday it found light oil in a well off the coast of Sergipe state, part of an ongoing strategy to search for more crude in its existing production blocks.

The company said in a regulatory filing it found oil in the 3-PRM-12-SES exploratory well in the northern edge of the Piranema block, 28 kilometres off the coast of Sergipe. Petrobras estimates the well has 15 million barrels of recoverable oil, the equivalent of about one week of its domestic crude output.

The Brazilian National Petroleum Agency said that the discovery was made at a depth of 813 metres and that the well produced API 44 degree crude. The company plans to drill a second well and do further evaluations of the new oil accumulation. The Piranema field was declared a commercial find in August 2004.