Petrobras Refinances $1.8 Billion Loans Following Tax Shortfall

By Fabiola Moura

Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's largest company by market value, refinanced 4.4 billion reais ($1.8 billion) of loans from state-controlled banks Banco do Brasil SA and Caixa Economica Federal and borrowed 1.5 billion reais more.

Petrobras, as the government-run oil company is known, said it paid in advance the loans previously scheduled to mature in the first half of 2009 and renewed them for the same amount, pushing back the due date to the first half of 2011, according to a e-mailed statement late yesterday.

The Rio de Janeiro-based company was forced to borrow 2 billion reais from Caixa in late October because of a “momentary difficulty” in paying taxes, the country's Energy Minister Edison Lobao told reporters on Nov. 27.

Petrobras refinanced the October loan and received another 1.5 billion reais from Sao Paulo-based Caixa, according to the statement.

There is no specific purpose for the financing, a spokeswoman for Petrobras said in a telephone interview.

Petrobras fell 5.2 percent, to 22.14 reais, in Sao Paulo trading yesterday. The shares have plunged 50 percent since the beginning of the year, more than the 41 percent retreat in the benchmark Bovespa index.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fabiola Moura in New York at fdemoura@bloomberg.net