Brought to you by Quest Offshore & Southern Cone Consultants
Royal Dutch Shell Plc said it’s preparing for a “prolonged downturn” by cutting thousands of jobs and slashing billions of dollars in investments over the next two years. The shares gained the most in almost six months. The company, which in April said it was confident prices would return to $90 a barrel in three... Continue Reading →
Brazil’s central bank raised its key rate by 50 basis points for a sixth straight meeting and signaled that borrowing costs are high enough to slow inflation toward its target. The bank’s board, led by President Alexandre Tombini, boosted the Selic rate to 14.25 percent Wednesday as forecast by 50 of 58 economists surveyed by... Continue Reading →
Mexico started its annual program to lock in oil sales for the coming year as a shield against a further drop in prices, three people with direct knowledge said. Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are among the banks involved, said the people, who asked not to be... Continue Reading →
A new note from Macquarie's Vikas Dwivedi underscores the challenge now facing offshore projects, saying "Offshore projects even more at risk than U.S. shale." Why? Because the projects' break-even points are much higher, given all the investment that goes into them. Read More
When Marcelo Odebrecht was transferred to prison last week after his company was charged with cheating Petrobras out of R$6.4bn ($1.9bn), he became the latest member of Brazil’s elite to be sucked into the country’s biggest-ever corruption scandal — and also one of the most unusual. The 47-year-old is president and chief executive of Odebrecht — the Brazilian... Continue Reading →
When Standard & Poor’s said on Tuesday it was considering downgrading Brazil’s credit rating by one notch to junk, markets seemed to shrug off the news. After initially touching a 12-year low, Brazil’s currency, the real, finished virtually flat at R$3.36 against the dollar while the Ibovespa benchmark stock index resumed a rally from earlier in the day,... Continue Reading →
Brazilian federal police are investigating potential irregularities in a military program that aims to build a nuclear-powered submarine in partnership with France by 2023, newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Wednesday. Folha said police searched for documents that could prove their suspicions of fraud in the program. The search was part of a wider... Continue Reading →
(Reuters) - Brazil's central bank was poised to maintain its aggressive pace of interest rate hikes on Wednesday after a steep cut in fiscal savings targets weakened the real currency and stirred doubts about the government's commitment to help contain price increases. Forty-two out of 55 analysts surveyed by Reuters last week expect the central... Continue Reading →
Brazil will probably lose its investment-grade status from more than one rating agency by end-2016, according to most market participants polled by Reuters after S&P revised the country's outlook to negative on Tuesday. Twenty-three of the 28 respondents believe Standard & Poor's will downgrade Brazil's credit rating to junk status by the end of next... Continue Reading →
The real’s swings between losses and gains was the highest among major currencies as concern Brazil faces a downgrade to junk offset speculation that the central bank will increase borrowing costs by another half-percentage point. The increase in volatility this month added to the risk for investors wanting to take advantage of the highest interest... Continue Reading →
Brazil Energy Insight 