Brazil's state-controlled oil company Petrobras is selling stakes in two big offshore oilfields and two power plants to France's Total in a deal worth $2.2 billion, both companies announced Wednesday. The agreement comes under a previously announced Petrobras asset sale aimed at raising billions of dollars for the indebted group. The transaction will see Total get pumping rights to significant parts of two deepwater, pre-salt oilfields off Brazil's south-eastern coast whose discovery in 2007 was seen as a resource bonanza.
Total will pick up 22.5 percent of the Iara field and 35 percent of the Lapa field, which started operation on Tuesday. The French company will also become 50-percent owner of two thermal energy plants, Romulo de Almeida and Celso Furtado, in the north-eastern state of Bahia. The transaction comes at a time of relatively low prices for oil - and amid a huge corruption scandal involving Petrobras that saw the company's rating downgraded and its debt pile of over $120 billion become worrisome.
Total's CEO, Patrick Pouyanne, said in Paris that "these deals will considerably reinforce Total's presence in Brazil by giving us access to the remarkable pre-salt resources and allowing us to integrate into the promising integrated gas chain in the country."