Brazil's surprise move to privatize Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA sent the utility's shares soaring nearly 50% on Tuesday as investors bet the plan augured further moves to loosen the government's grip on the economy.
By Haley Zaremba from Oilprice - Not too long ago Brazilian state oil company Petrobras was the most indebted oil & gas company in the world. The long-suffering company has faced dire mismanagement while being weighed down by allegations of involvement in Brazil’s widespread corruption. But that’s all changing.
Brazil's Petrobras has reduced prices for the gasoline it sells in Brazil to below parity with the fuel imported from the United States, reducing profit margins to regain market share. The company has sharply reduced the price gap between the value of gasoline sold at its refineries and the spot price in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico since early July, when it announced changes to its pricing to adopt almost daily adjustments, according to fuel market experts.
Venezuela's state-run PDVSA has reduced crude sales to its U.S. refining unit Citgo Petroleum while increasing supply to Russia's Rosneft, following a plan signed in May to catch up on overdue deliveries, according to PDVSA documents, sources from the company and its joint ventures.
Exxon Mobil said that it has discovered additional oil in the Payara reservoir offshore Guyana, increasing the total discovery to approximately 500 million barrels oil equivalent. The result increases the estimated recoverable resources in Guyana’s Stabroek Block formation to about 2.25 to 2.75 billion barrels. By way of comparison, the much-heralded Thunder Horse find in the Gulf of Mexico has reserves of about one billion barrels.
Vietnam has ordered a Spanish private company conducting a gas-drilling expedition in a disputed area of the South China Sea to cease operations following military threats from China, according to reports.
The world's first full-scale floating wind farm has started to take shape off the north-east coast of Scotland. The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines used.
Maersk Oil said on Friday that it had reached another key milestone ahead of first gas from its flagship North Sea Culzean field. All three platform jackets for the £3.3billion project have now been put in place on time and on budget, the company said.
Ecuador will not honor the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) agreement to cut oil output, Ecuador’s Oil Minister Carlos Perez said this week. The country, one of OPEC’s 14 member countries, is rethinking its commitment to drop oil production to 522,000 barrels a day.
BP unit and subsidiaries of France’s Total and Germany’s Wintershall have signed an investment agreement with Argentina’s state-run oil company YPF to jointly invest US$1.15 billion in the Vaca Muerta shale formation in Argentina.