Offshore staff
RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil’s Petrobras is seeking a joint-venture partner to invest as much as $4 billion into the company’s deep-water drilling operations in the US Gulf of Mexico, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
Petrobras has reportedly hired Morgan Stanley to seek out potential partners for the assets, which the seller pegs at roughly $8 billion. The bank has begun sending out initial financial information to prospective buyers, including foreign and US oil companies.
Petrobras is looking to sell as much as 50% of its Gulf operations in a deal that would allow it to maintain control. The asset sales are part of a previously announced plan by the Brazilian oil giant to raise nearly $15 billion to fund its five-year investment plan.
Petrobras has looked to scale back itsinvestment in the US and in other overseas operations by selling assets including oil drilling blocks in the GoM and Brazil. In July, the company said it has increased its goal for raising revenues from asset sales to $14.8 billion, up from $13.6 billion previously, and reiterated that the sales will focus on overseas assets. The company has provided few details on which assets it plans to sell.
Petrobras, which in Brazil unlocked one of the world's most promising offshore oil provinces, has delved deep into the GoM’s most challenging new region, the so-called Lower Tertiary. It found oil there in 2002.
ItsCascade-Chinook development began producing oil in February. It is being closely watched by the industry, as it is the first to pump crude from Lower Tertiary rocks in the far-off Walker Ridge area of the Gulf, an area thick with rival projects. The fields are located about 160 miles south of Louisiana in waters more than 8,000-ft deep.
Production at the Cascade well has been ramping up quickly to 174,554 total barrels of oil in June, up from 85,348 barrels in March. Petrobras owns 100% of Cascade and 66.67% of Chinook, in partnership with France’s Total. The Cascade-Chinook development was also the first in the US Gulf of Mexico to pump offshore oil using a floating, production, storage and offloading vessel instead of a traditional oil platform.
09/11/2012
