Brazil’s state-run oil and gas company Petrobras has outlined long-awaited plans to sell eight Brazilian refineries with a total refining capacity of 1.1 mb/d and other assets as the company needs to cut debt and concentrate on its core oil and gas exploration business. The eight refining assets included in the sale correspond to the recently built 230,000 bbl/d Refinaria Abreu e Lima (RNEST), Refinaria Landulpho Alves (RLAM), Refinaria Gabriel Passos (REGAP), Refinaria Presidente Getúlio Vargas (REPAR), Refinaria Alberto Pasqualini (REFAP), Refinaria Isaac Sabbá (REMAN), Unidade de Industrialização do Xisto (SIX), and Lubrificantes e Derivados de Petróleo do Nordeste (LUBNOR). Besides, Petrobras plans to sell PUDSA, a network of service stations in Uruguay, and an additional stake in Brazil's fuel distribution company BR Distribuidora (71% owned by Petrobras) through a secondary public offering of shares.
Petrobras needs to sell non-core assets in order to reduce its massive net debt of US$73bn (as of January 2019). Over the 2016-2018 period, Petrobras divested assets worth US$20bn and could sell another US$20bn worth of assets through 2019. However, the entire privatisation of the company has been ruled out by the government so far. Petrobras has also recently announced plans to cut its operational expenditure (OPEX) by US$8.1bn in the period from 2019 through 2023 in order to improve its financial situation.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.