Petrobras will sell its business in Africa for $ 1,300 million



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Petróleo Brasileiro SA, the Brazilian national oil company, is preparing to sell its stake in a joint venture in Africa for about $ 1.3 trillion, the Valor Economía newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Petrobras As the company is known, it owns 50% of Petrobras Oil & Gas BV, or Petrobras Africa. Grupo BTG Pactual SA holds a 40% stake and Helios Investment Partners owns the remaining 10%. The three shareholders would sell their shares, which would value the company at around $ 2,600 million, said Valor Economico, citing an anonymous source.

Reuters reported on June 18 that a consortium led by Vitol SA had entered into exclusive talks to buy shares in Petrobras Africa, after overcoming several competing offers, including that of the materials operator. first Glencore Plc.

Representatives of Petrobras and Glencore did not respond immediately to requests for comment and a representative of Vitol declined to comment

Petrobras Africa participates in two offshore exploration blocks off Nigeria which contain the Akpo and Agbami production sites and are respectively operated by Total SA and Chevron Corp.

Scotiabank with Evercore They are in charge of the sales process, according to the document of the same. The company, announced last year, would give the consortium a stake in some of the largest and cheapest deposits in Nigeria. Vitol is expected to take the lion's share of the investment, with an estimated cost of $ 1 billion, according to a source.

Petrobras in debt announced its intention to sell the stake in November 2017 as part of a divestment program to sell assets of 21 billion US dollars until the end of the year [19659002] The company executed another divestment plan in 2015 and 2016 for which it sold assets for $ 13.6 billion.

The Brazilian state sold its assets in Argentina and Chile for $ 1.61 billion and gave the Mexican Alpek $ 385 million in control of the Petrochemical Company of Pernambuco (Petroquímica Suape) and the Integrated Textile Company (Citepe)

At the end of June, Petrobras also approved the sale of its stake in Petrobras Paraguay Distribución Limited, Petrobras Paraguay Operacion s Logística SRL and Petrobras Paraguay Gas SRL to the Copetrol Group

Through the plan divestment, Petrobras intends to restructure to reduce its size, cope with the serious crisis caused by the corruption scandal and adapt the company to a negative situation by falling oil prices

Business Analysis in clean energies

Petrobras, a public company, signed a memorandum of understanding with the French companies Total and Total Erén to analyze viability Wind and solar activities in the Brazilian territory, informed the Brazilian company

The agreement aims to determine the existing potential, especially in the north-east of Brazil, to develop projects in Brazil. renewable energy, informed Nelson Silva, director of the organization and management systems of Petrobras. ] Silva denied that Petrobras had retreated into the renewable energy sector and said that in 2017, the company 's business plan was focused on oil and gas development because a particular financial situation ".

"We focused on the financial recovery of the company," he added. In 2018, Silva said that Petrobras would be more dedicated to renewable energy.

The Petrobras spokesman pointed out that at the moment, the shares of each partner are not defined and that there is no mention of investment. "The first thing is to explore the opportunities, to make a technical study and to define if the conditions of realization of the projects are viable," he explains.

Petrobras has four 104-megawatt wind farms installed in addition to a research and development plant. in solar photovoltaic energy of 1.1 megawatts in Rio Grande do Norte. Total Erén, founded in 2012, focuses on the development of projects in the fields of wind, solar and hydro power

The memorandum not being binding, Petrobras could develop other partnerships . Petrobras and Total consolidated their strategic alliance in 2016, when the two companies committed to jointly evaluating opportunities in Brazil and abroad in all segments of the oil and gas chain. The two companies are allied in several consortiums of exploration and production in Brazil and abroad. (With information from the AFP)

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