Brazil expects to renegotiate by year-end the price of 5 billion barrels of oil and gas rights purchased by Petrobras in a 2010 stock-for-oil swap, an energy ministry official said on Wednesday, removing a complication in the state-led company’s plans to finance and develop major new offshore discoveries.
Petrobras bought the rights from Brazil’s federal government to six areas in September 2010 for about $43 billion, or an average price of $8.51 a barrel, a value considered high for unproduced and unconfirmed oil resources.
The purchase was part of a more than $70 billion stock sale, at the time the biggest-ever sale of stock in history. Five billion barrels is enough oil to supply the needs of the United States, the world’s largest consumer, for eight and a half months.
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