28 March 2013, Lagos – Reports say Petrobras is in the process of selling off its Nigeria offshore interests,
The company, aiming to raise cash for further investment, is expected to earn up to $5 billion from the sale.
Standard Chartered has been hired by the Brazilian firm to over see the asset sale, expected to commence in two months time.
Asian state oil companies are expected to participate in the auction, hoping to add more production assets to their portfolios.
Standard Chartered and Petrobras declined to comment.
Petrobras holds an 8 per cent stake in the Chevron-operated Agbami field and a 20% share of the Akpo project, operated by Total, after starting operations in Nigeria in 1998.
The company is divesting assets and redirecting investment towards higher-return activities such as exploration and production to finance a five-year, $236.7 billion capital spending plan that is the world’s largest corporate investment programme.
Chief executive Maria das Graças Foster set a goal for asset sales of $9.9 billion this year, which she hopes can free up cash, avert the sale of new shares, reduce debt and protect the company’s investment-grade ratings.
The plan should help Petrobras more than double current production by the start of next decade, to about 5.2 million barrels of oil and natural gas equivalent a day, and help Brazil become self-sufficient in refined products as well as oil.
By divesting assets such as the Nigeria blocks, Petrobras could focus more on exploring for oil in a vast deep sea region off the coast of Brazil known as the subsalt and thought to contain dozens of billions of barrels of high-quality oil.
In its previous five-year plan, announced last year, Petrobras had hoped to sell about $15 billion of assets to help finance capital spending. But as it rushed to sell assets, the company found potential buyers reluctant to pay top dollar for projects such as its oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
