Brazil services players get $1.5bn lifeline
Brazil's Petrobras, three state banks and HSBC Holdings are primed to set up 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 told Bloomberg.
He added the Brazilian giant is also prepared to pay as much as 70% of its contracts with suppliers before deliveries.
Petrobras needs the suppliers to help it meet a five-year, $174.4 billion investment plan aimed at increasing output by 44% to 2.68 million barrels of equivalent per day by 2013.
Failure to get finance may prevent the suppliers from meeting their contracts with Petrobras.
Last month drilling outfit Scorpion Offshore scrapped plans for a $700 million newbuild rig, which was to be leased to Petrobras, because it failed to tie up financing. In July last year, Petrobras finalised a contract with Scorpion for the newbuild which set the rig's dayrate at $485,000.
Caixa Economica Federal, Brazil’s state discount and housing bank, will create a fund of as much as 1.5 billion reals ($660 million) to take equity stakes in oil service companies, Barbassa said.
Petrobras and the banks will create two funds of 1 billion reals 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, another state-controlled bank. The other fund will be backed by Petrobras, BNDES and HSBC.