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To: JimisJim who wrote (140203)	9/18/2010 3:49:53 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206150

Moratorium slows Petrobras's Gulf of Mexico wells * Moratorium raises uncertainty over drilling plans * End 2010 deadline still achievable for Cascade, Chinook RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling will delay some wells that Brazil's Petrobras is planning in the Gulf of Mexico, but a year-end project start date remained, a company official said on Wednesday. The state-controlled firm had planned to drill additional wells after completing the first two in that area as part of the Cascade/Chinook project, but has put those plans on hold because of the moratorium following the massive BP spill earlier this year, Petrobras's Cesar Palagi told reporters. "The impact of the moratorium is on the plan to drill and complete additional wells," said Palagi, who manages Petrobras projects in the Walker Ridge region of the Gulf of Mexico. "Evidently other wells will be drilled in that area, but that will depend on the moratorium. We still believe we can begin production by the end of 2010," he said. The company will use a floating platform known as an FPSO to produce oil from Cascade and Chinook, which are two separate fields. It has drilled one well in each, and the project has capacity to produce 80,000 barrels per day. Palagi said the performance of the first two wells would determine both the number of additional wells Petrobras will drill and the amount that the fields produce when they begin output. The two fields are 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) apart in water depths of up to 2,713 meters (8,900 feet) about 258 kilometers (160 miles) from the coast of Louisiana. The operation will be the first use in the United States of an FPSO, which are common in Brazil's offshore oil industry. Using FPSOs facilitates oil production in remote marine areas where pipeline construction is difficult. (Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by David Gregorio)

To: JimisJim who wrote (140203)	9/18/2010 7:07:34 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206150

worries about Dutch disease and commodity dependence there is now a revival of interest in industrial policy—partly because of worries about Dutch disease and commodity dependence. economist.com Thus forcing PBR to invest in lower profitable refineries intead of concentrating on digging presal out. Or forcing Vale to go into fertilizers and invest into steel mills. "Brazil never wholly abandoned industrial policy. Interest on loans made by its giant national development bank, the BNDES, is set at less than half market rates, involving a selective subsidy. Since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president in 2003, industrial policy has become more pronounced and explicit. The BNDES supports innovation by providing seed money for ventures in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and information technology. More controversially, it backs mergers and foreign takeovers by big Brazilian companies. These have included the creation of Brasil Foods, a big food company, and the merger of two big meat firms, JBS and Friboi. The petrochemical industry has consolidated in Braskem, a joint venture between Odebrecht, a construction giant, and Petrobras, the national oil company. The electricity industry is reorganising around Eletrobras, the former state monopoly. Critics denounce all this as the creation of “national champions” that are beholden to the government, either directly or indirectly. Luciano Coutinho, the BNDES’s president, retorts that Brazil’s new multinationals are highly competitive Darwinian survivors of decades of economic volatility. “We have an open economy, it’s different from the model of the 1960s and 1970s. The market is imperfect, but the state also makes mistakes,” he concedes." Idem