MOSCOW (MRC) -- Brazil's oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) has agreed to sell its 49% stake in the sugar and ethanol joint venture Nova Fronteira Bioenergia SA to partner Sao Martinho SA, both companies said in securities filings on Thursday, reported Reuters.
State-controlled Petrobras will receive 24 million new Sao Martinho shares as payment for the stake. Petrobras said in the filing that it will attribute a USD133 million value to the deal.
The 24 million shares Sao Martinho is going to issue are equivalent to 6.6% of its capital. The shares will not be subject to a lock-up period and Petrobras can sell them later in a structured process, the oil company said.
The sale is one of the five ongoing transactions that Brazil's federal auditing court did not prohibit Petrobras from doing in a recent decision that halted an asset-sale process. Petrobras has set a two-year goal of selling USD15.1 billion in assets by the end of this year despite the court's prohibition.
Petrobras has stakes in eight other sugar and ethanol plants in Brazil besides the one sold on 15 December. The oil company is also discussing the sale of a combined 45% stake in seven mills controlled by sugar producer Tereos SA.
As MRC informed before, Brazil's state-controlled oil producer Petrobras is seeking to sell its 5.8 billion Brazilian real (USD1.4 billion) stake in petrochemical producer Braskem SA. Petrobras has hired Brazilian bank Banco Bradesco SA as a financial adviser and has started to pitch the sale to foreign investors. Petrobras owns a 36% stake in Braskem, Latin America's largest petrochemical producer. The sale would help Petrobras meet its target of selling USD15.1 billion worth of assets in 2015-16, a key part of its plan to cut debt as oil prices plunge to 12-year lows.
Braskem S.A. produces ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, xylenes, butadiene, butene, isoprene, dicyclopentediene, MTBE, caprolactam, ammonium sulfate, cyclohexene, polyethylene theraphtalat, polyethylene, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
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