Petrobras: a segunda pior do mundo

Matéria de Peter Millard no “Bloomberg” classifica a Petrobras como a segunda pior companhia petrolífera do mundo neste ano, atrás apenas da BP. Confira o texto na íntegra, em inglês:

“Petroleo Brasileiro SA is the world’s second-worst performing oil company this year, behind only BP Plc, on concern Brazil’s government will force the producer to pay more than investors originally expected for crude reserves.
The value of the 5 billion barrels of reserves, which the government plans to swap for new stock, will determine the size of the state-run company’s planned share sale this year and may signal the extent to which President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration can increase control. A higher price may force Petrobras to sell more shares to pay for the oil, diluting minority shareholders, said Max Bueno, an analyst with brokerage Spinelli Corretora.
“The government wants to go back to the populace and say ‘we have a fair value on the reserves’,” Ted Harper, who helps manage $6.8 billion at Frost Investment Advisors, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Houston. A postponement of the share sale, which moved it closer to the October presidential elections, “totally muddies the water and makes it potentially politically charged,” he said.
Petrobras sank 27 percent in the first half of 2010, its worst start to a year since 1995. That compares with a 47 percent drop for BP, which faces tens of billions of dollars in damages from an April explosion that led to the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. oil producer, and Europe’s biggest, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, lost 16 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Read more