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Oct 18

Petrobras says BG eyes Brazil share offer-report


RIO DE JANEIRO Oct 18 (Reuters) - Britain’s BG Group may sell shares in its Brazilian subsidiary but is not planning to sell stakes in its offshore blocks in Brazil, the head of state-run oil giant Petrobras said in an interview published on Tuesday.Brazilian media reported this month that BG might sell, or “farm out,” part of its holdings in offshore blocks in Brazil that include stakes in discoveries such as the giant Lula and Cernambi fields.Petrobras Chief Executive Jose Sergio Gabrielli said BG may raise capital in an operation similar to one proposed by Portuguese oil company Galp , which, like BG, is a partner with Petrobras in offshore fields.”They are not leaving Brazil, and they are not selling part of what they own in our blocks,” Gabrielli said in an interview with the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper.”On the contrary, they are raising funds so that they can stay in Brazil,” he said, adding that the operation would also be similar to Spanish oil company Repsol’s 2010 sale of part of its Brazil unit to China’s Sinopec Group .A BG spokeswoman said the company had no comment.Galp said in March it plans to raise 2 billion euros, currently equal to $2.7 billion, by selling shares in its Brazilian unit to finance ambitious growth plans.That followed Repsol’s $7 billion sale of 40 percent of its Brazil unit in October of 2010.BG has a 25 percent stake in the BM-S-11 block, which holds the Lula and Cernambi fields, as well as a 30 percent stake in the BM-S-9 block which holds the Carioca discovery.The blocks are located in the deep-water region known as the subsalt, an area the size of New York state that holds at least 50 billion barrels of oil.

Posted 7 months ago

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Oct 14

UPDATE 1-Sinopec Group seeks more overseas acquisitions -chairman


HONG KONG Oct 13 (Reuters) - Sinopec Group, Asia’s largest refiner, is on the prowl for more foreign oil and gas acquisitions, chairman Fu Chengyu said on Friday, signalling the importance for China’s state-owned oil majors to secure enough resources to satisfy growing demand by the world’s largest energy consumer.Fu, speaking at a conference in Hong Kong, said he could not give a specific timeframe for future acquisitions that would expand Sinopec’s global presence but would consider opportunities as they arise.”When we see a good a opportunity and one that can give us good shareholder value, we can do it. Right now we are looking for opportunities,” he told a media conference.Earlier this week, the energy giant signed a C$2.2 billion ($2.1 billion) deal to buy Canadian oil and gas explorer Daylight Energy Ltd . It also bought an 18 percent stake in Chevron Corp’s Indonesian deep-water project for $680 million, an official told Reuters on Tuesday.Sinopec Group is the parent of Hong Kong-listed and Shanghai-listed China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) . The group does overseas upstream oil and gas investment and operations via its wholly owned unit, Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp (SIPC).Analysts expect more deals in coming months because of the deep pockets of China’s energy giants coupled with shriveling stock prices of foreign oil and gas companies.Fu said China’s implementation of a nationwide resource tax on domestic sales of crude oil and natural gas would not have a huge impact on the firm.”For Sinopec the effective resources tax rate is around 3.7 percent rate. The overall impact is not big,” he said.The sales of crude oil and natural gas sales nationwide would be subject for a tax of between 5-10 percent, China’s State Council, or cabinet, said on Monday.Moves to increase the threshold for the windfall tax on domestic oil and gas production was on the government’s agenda.”The government has already said it will raise the threshold,” Fu said.A plan to revamp China’s current fuel pricing scheme and a new scheme for the country’s natural gas pricing have been submitted to the State Council, China’s cabinet, for approval, an industry source with knowledge of the situation said on Wednesday.Fu said the government was looking at further reform of the refined product prices mechanism but could not say whether there will be any changes.Capped domestic fuel prices have weighed on Sinopec’s refining margins in the first half of the year due to high crude prices and the state-owned firm’s inability to pass on higher costs to customers.

Posted 7 months ago

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Oct 13

Apple iPhone 4S features Qualcomm chip


The Qualcomm chipset is an upgrade from the one used in the previous version of the phone, iFixit said.Apple is famous for designing sealed-up devices intended to discourage fans from poking around in them.The iPhone 4S will hit store shelves around the globe on Friday after a 15-month hiatus, and is expected to draw the usual throngs eager to grab a piece of the final gadget unveiled during Steve Jobs’ lifetime.The fifth iteration of the iconic smartphone comes with a faster processor and a better and more light-sensitive camera, but otherwise is a spitting image of its predecessor. Tech experts say the real gems lie beneath the familiar sleek casing, especially in its “Siri” voice-activated digital assistant.For a demonstration of the teardown, click here

Posted 7 months ago

18 notes

Apple, iPhone, 4S, features, Qualcomm, chip,

Oct 13

Analysis: Return of the pink slip? Risk of layoffs rising


That may be the wrong question. With Europe’s debt crisis rattling the world financial system and demand fading, the question on many executives’ and economists’ minds is whether the nation is on the brink of another large round of layoffs.It does not help that the uncertainty that has sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 index down more than 10 percent since mid-July is lingering into October when big companies start planning out their 2012 budgets. At the very least, executives said it looks unlikely that companies will start the significant rounds of hiring that would be needed to drive down the nation’s unemployment rate, currently 9.1 percent.”I think people are in the process of dialing back 2012 expectations and that will bleed into whatever they were planning,” said Michael Neal, a General Electric Co vice chairman who heads the company’s GE Capital finance arm. “My view is they continue to stay with a tight belt and I think it means less hiring than they would have done otherwise.”Weak earnings reports from JPMorgan Chase & Co and Alcoa Inc are only increasing the market’s anxiety, and the tone of executives’ comments are far from upbeat.Chief executives have already begun to echo the warning that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made early in the Great Depression of the 1930s: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”“I’m more concerned about lack of confidence than about market fundamentals,” Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said on Tuesday. “It almost looks like the world is worrying itself into another recession and that should not be allowed to happen.”Their concern about worry has not stopped them from acting, though. JPMorgan on Thursday said it would cut 1,000 jobs from its investment banking business.THE BALL GETS ROLLING?JPMorgan’s cuts follow a much larger move by Bank of America Corp, which last month said it would eliminate some 30,000 jobs — about 10 percent of its workforce. While smaller in scale, earlier this month drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc, Level 3 Communications Inc and Verso Paper Corp all disclosed plans to cut hundreds of jobs.Some 24 percent of large-company chief executives expect to cut jobs in the U.S. over the next six months, according to a survey by the Business Roundtable. That is more than double the 11 percent who expected to cut in the June edition of the survey, but less than the 36 percent that planned to add jobs.Theirs is a darker view than that of the chief financial officers of mid-sized companies, where 68 percent expect to add jobs over the next year, down from 80 percent earlier this year, according to a GE Capital-sponsored survey.Companies are also cutting their spending plans for the United States. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world’s largest retailer said on Wednesday it plans to cut its U.S. capital spending by 7.4 percent next year.”If the economy continues to slow … I expect companies probably to continue to keep payroll very lean and for the unemployment rate to bump to 9.25 percent, conceivably it could go to 9.5 percent,” said Michael Yoshikami, CEO of YCMNET Advisors a San Francisco investment house with $1 billion under management. “As CFOs and (human resources) managers are planning going forward, you can’t avoid the human dynamic here. And if the outlook is very uncertain, they’re going to be very, very hesitant to make broad hiring decisions. It’s not good timing because budgets are being set right now.”PROFIT PINCHOne warning sign that more belt-tightening could be ahead is that profit growth seems to be slowing down. Most U.S. public companies report quarterly results in the coming weeks, and earnings season has gotten off to a weak start.Analysts have lowered their growth forecasts for the companies of the S&P 500 and now look for overall profit for the group to rise 12.5 percent in the third quarter, less than the 17 percent they expected at the start of July.The sharpest downward revisions have come in the finance sector, where analysts now look for profit to rise just 1.7 percent, down from a prior expectation of 15.6 percent. They’ve also lowered estimates for companies that sell basic materials like metals, telecommunications firms and sellers of consumer staples like food.The finance, retail and manufacturing sectors could all see cuts — with retailers particularly vulnerable if the holiday selling season is weak, analysts said.”We certainly are on a cusp here and it does feel as though the economy has downshifted,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a consulting company that helps laid-off executives find jobs. “A lot of companies are coming into this last quarter cautious and they’re not optimistic … It feels like the economy could turn either way.”One hopeful sign for workers is that companies that cut head count aggressively during the recession may have little fat left to trim, making them more likely to hold off unless the economy definitively weakens.”There might be some firms that decide to preemptively cut, but I think that many firms are pretty lean and mean,” said Michael Goodman, director of economic and public policy research at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. “Even though output has been growing, that’s with tens of millions of fewer workers on the job. So it’s tough to imagine too much more work being squeezed out of fewer employees in this environment.”

Posted 7 months ago

22 notes

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