Posted on 11/05/2015 5:17:41 AM PST by thackney
A four-day strike at Petrobras gathered steam on Wednesday, cutting crude and natural gas output from the No. 2 South American oil producer and threatening to become the most disruptive walkout at the state-run oil company in 20 years.
On Wednesday, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as Petrobras is formally known, said in a securities filing late Wednesday that oil output in Brazil was about 140,000 barrels a day, or 6.5 percent below pre-strike levels of about 2.1 million barrels a day.
Using contingency plans management restored production that was cut by as much as 273,000 barrels a day, or 13 percent below pre-strike levels on Monday, and by 178,000 barrels a day on Tuesday, or 8.5 percent below levels before the strike began Sunday, Petrobras said.
The strike is having a "significant" financial impact on Petrobras a company source told Reuters late Wednesday adding that output cuts had not changed significantly from Tuesday.
The cuts have already caused the biggest strike-induced hit to Petrobras' crude output since a 32-day strike in 1995 that led to lines at gas stations and military occupation of refineries. The latest strike is also likely to increase pressure on a company hobbled by a corruption scandal and struggling under $130 billion of debt, the largest in the world oil industry.
"This is serious because it is happening in the midst of Brazil's worst economic crisis in decades and in the middle of Petrobras' worst crisis ever," said Adriano Pires, head of the Brazilian Infrastructure Institute, a Rio de Janeiro energy research company....
Members of Brazil's national oilworkers federation said on Wednesday that Petrobras was underestimating output losses. In a statement late Wednesday, Brazil's biggest oil union federation said production cuts are as much as a quarter of Petrobras Brazilian output, or just over 500,000-barrels a day.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Unfortunately most Brazilians are cultural marxists and have no clue as to the alternative of Bolivarian socialism. The concept of limited government is absent. That is pretty much the Latin curse - keeps most of S America in the pits.
Petrobras sounds like a company that makes polyester women’s underwear.
So are they not going to pay back the $10 Billion Obama loanded them?
Pray America wakes
Unfortunately, “most Brazilians are cultural Marxists”, which due to theirs being a pure democracy, ‘most’ is often 1 vote greater than 50%.
The socialists like Lula and Dilma bribe the slum peasant mass, who don’t know shite from shinola, with trinkets and a few Real to get the 50%+1.
Being down there during a national election is a sight to see.
Kinda stupid timing due to current depressed prices.
Likely Petrobas will find out they do not really need all those workers, and decide to whittle it down some.
My thought as well. IIRC, they did this in 2009 or there abouts as well.
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