Check the photo and the caption "A man with a plan:Lula".
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Petrobras to take pre-salt control
News wires
Photo by SCANPIX/REUTERS
Brazil's state-run Petrobras will be the sole operator of new pre-salt fields under a major oil reform proposed today by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a move he claimed would herald "a new independence day" for the country.
The proposal to develop massive oil reserves off Brazil's coast calls for a switch to production-sharing agreements from the existing concession systems, and creates a new state-owned holding company to manage pre-salt projects, Reuters quoted a company filing to the Brazil stock exchange regulator as saying.
The legislation would require it hold at least a 30% stake in all of the future pre-salt oil projects, it said. A shareholders' meeting will be called to decide on a government plan to boost Petrobras' capitalisation.
Under the new proposal, which Lula is due to unveil later in the day, the government will have the right to declare any oil region as strategic and implement a sharing system, it said.
Lula hailed the unveiling of the new oil legislation as a "new independence day".
"We don't have the right to take the money we're going get with this oil and waste it," reuters quoted him as saying in his weekly radio address, broadcast today.
"What we want ... is to use this oil to make Brazil a wealthier country, to make it more developed."
Meanwhile, Petrobras' chief financial officer Almir Barbassa said Brasilia's plan to boost the state-run producer's capital would be limited to the equivalent of 5 billion barrels of oil.
Barbassa said the plan is to boost the capital of the company as quickly as possible.
The proposed overhaul focuses on vast new oil reserves that were discovered off Brazil's southern coast in 2007, giving the country the potential to become a major energy exporter. The find was one of the world's biggest in a decade and has opened up a new frontier in global petroleum exploration.
The oil lies below shifting sand and a thick layer of salt deep beneath the ocean floor, making it difficult and costly to extract. The so-called pre-salt region, which stretches for hundreds of miles along the coast, is believed to hold an estimated minimum of 50 billion barrels of oil.
The government also wanted to change the way oil royalties are distributed to ensure a steady revenue flow to poorer states. But Lula backed off that proposal late on Sunday after the governors of the top three oil-producing states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Espirito Santo protested. |
