No Shortage of Buyers For Petrobras Assets, CEO Says

Earlier this year, Brazil's state-controlled oil giant Petrobras

said it was looking to sell $13.6 billion in assets to raise cash for its ambitious five-year $224.7 billion exploration and production budget. Apparently, there's no shortage of interested parties for those assets, according to a Bloomberg interview with Petrobras CEO Jose Sergio Gabrielli. While the company has not decided which specific assets to sell, it is believed some of the assets it will part with are in the U.S. area of the Gulf of Mexico. The company may farm out stakes in 186 exploratory blocks in the Gulf of Mexico, said Gabrielli, according to Bloomberg. Potential suitors for the Petrobras assets were not mentioned in the interview. The company's Chinook-Cascade project in the Gulf could result in output of 80,000 barrels per day of crude. On Thursday, Standard & Poor's raised the credit rating for Petrobras to “BBB” from “BBB-” following an upgrade of Brazil's sovereign debt. The Brazilian government is the largest Petrobras shareholder.