Brazil’s Petrobras to invest $44 billion in 2010

Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras said on Tuesday it will invest 79.5 billion reais ($44 billion) this year as it seeks to tap deep-sea offshore crude reserves that could turn Brazil into a major energy exporter.

The company has not yet released an updated five-year business plan because it is waiting for the approval of a government capitalization plan that could bring in tens of billions of dollars in new funding.

“It really hasn’t had much of an effect on the market. People are waiting for the new business plan,” said Luiz Otavio Broad, an analyst at the brokerage Agora.

Petrobras said in a statement it will invest 35.7 billion reais in exploration and production and 30.8 billion reais in refining and petrochemicals, with the remainder going toward areas such as distribution and biofuels.

The company said that investment plan still had to be approved by Congress. Broad noted the 2010 investment plan was equal to the maximum amount that Congress had allowed the company to invest, though the actual investments executed could be less than what was planned.

Petrobras invested 50.7 billion reais in the first nine months of 2009. Total investment for 2009 is not yet available because the company last month delayed the presentation of fourth-quarter results.

Its investment plan for 2009 to 2013 called for $174 billion in outlays that include efforts to tap billions of barrels of oil from a vast deep-sea subsalt province, but the company does not know what funding it will have available until the capitalization is approved.

Dilma Rousseff, head of Petrobras’s board of directors, who is the ruling party’s candidate for presidential elections this year, said in a speech on Monday that the company would invest “something around 85 billion reais” this year.
Petrobras, which provided the 79.5 billion figure on Tuesday apparently in response to Rousseff’s statement, said it was still discussing the business plan for 2010-2014.

The company usually releases a 5-year investment plan at the start of each year.

Last year, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government launched a plan to swap development rights of 5 billion barrels of oil in the vast offshore subsalt province for Petrobras shares.

That came as part of a broader overhaul of oil legislation meant to give the government greater control over the industry and boost revenues from the massive fields.

Under the proposed rules, Petrobras would be the operator of all new projects in the subsalt region and would hold a minimum 30 percent stake in all new wells.