Rio de Janeiro - Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the world’s most- indebted publicly traded oil company, plans to sell $13.7 billion in assets in the next two years after a corruption probe limited access to overseas debt markets.
The sales will reduce leverage, improve cash flow and allow the Rio de Janeiro-based producer to focus on developing its most prolific fields in Brazil, it said in a statement Monday. The company previously planned to sell $5 billion to $11 billion in assets in the five years through 2018, it said.
Petrobras said it plans to sell assets from its exploration and production, supply and gas and energy divisions. The company may revise the plan because it will be sensitive to variables including the exchange rate and the price of oil, it said.
Petrobras, which is developing the largest group of offshore discoveries this century, emerged from the recent commodities boom with $135 billion of total debt after missing output targets and years of subsidising imported fuel. Moody’s Investors Service cut Petrobras’s credit rating two levels last week on concern a graft investigation will crimp the company’s ability to obtain financing and trim its debt.
The company is at the centre of Brazil’s biggest graft and money laundering scandal in which contractors allegedly colluded to inflate bids, and Petrobras executives took bribes and shared the proceeds with politicians.
Bloomberg