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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: architect* who wrote (93316)	11/9/2007 12:36:24 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 206281

Auction will be held for the remaining 271 oil and gas blocks. The 41 blocks removed form the auction are related to the reserves they discovered in: Santos (03), Espirito Santo (25) and Campos (13) agenciapetrobrasdenoticias.com.br (It is in Portuguese) Will rigorously observe the rights and guarantees them for the auctioned blocks. So they won't flip it. (Lula was present at the reunion I think he knows his people. They are still hurt by what Iraq did to them in 1970's) A bit of hitory why Lula might have been there to avoid any flipping: PBR discovered Majnoon a giant oil field in Iraq back in the 70's. Since the field had too much oil, (11-20 billion) Saddam played wayo and flipped. Forced renegotiation. (PBR says it has been reimbursed). The Brazilians never forgive Iraq for the wayo. Relations deteriorated after that. Brazil stopped selling and upgrading Saddam's Astros anti-tank rockets. Saddam didn;t pay his bills either "Avibras Industria Aeroespacial S.A., one of Brazil's largest weapons makers, said today that it was seeking bankruptcy protection from its creditors. The company said one client had owed it $40 million for more than a year. People at Avibras identified the client as Iraq. Avibras, a private company, said it had $100 million worth of equipment ready for shipment to the same client, which has not been shipped because of nonpayment of the debt." Payback time came when he had to defend Iraq in 1991 in the Kuwaiti war. The Saudi's had the version 2 of the weapon and plenty of them. The US let the Saudis loose after Saddam's tanks and they layed havoc.

To: architect* who wrote (93316)	11/13/2007 5:00:06 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 206281

On the removed of the blocks from the auction: harder for CVRD (NYSE: RIO) to go gas hunting, because it was eyeing those very blocks. The move has also left StatoilHydro (NYSE: STO) scratching and hissing, but it reflects the reality of today's oil patch. National interests are front and center, and I can't imagine that Norway would behave much differently if it stumbled upon a massive deposit in the North Sea tomorrow. While its future prospects are bright, Petrobras is still suffering the same growing pains as the rest of the energy elephants. Sure, the company ground out modest domestic production gains, which is better than Chevron (NYSE: CVX) could boast, but the beefy Brazilian is also spending a king's ransom in reais to maintain production growth. Lifting costs are up 10% year to date, even after excluding currency appreciation, and investments were up a whopping 35% in the quarter. As with its Chinese analogue, Petrobras has a strong asset portfolio, and it's fast becoming one of the most important global energy players. Fortunately, the shares haven't attracted the same level of speculative fervor, and I imagine that shareholders will continue to be rewarded by holding on for the ride. I'd advise Fools to keep an eye on those expenses and make sure you're getting your money's worth as Petrobras' production profile evolves. fool.com