Weekly Report - 18 July 2006

BRAZIL | Russian partner for Gasur? Executives of state oil company Petrobrás, on a European roadshow for investors, revealed last week that they had initiated conversations with the Russian firm Gazprom with a view to cooperating on a number of ventures, prominent among which is the Gasoducto del Sur (Gasur) scheme - the planned pipeline linking Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. Petrobrás recently suggested that Venezuela's participation, initially envisaged as major, would be limited to the stretch of the duct connecting the Venezuelan fields with Brazil's gas pipeline network. This was part of Brazil's new policy of reducing its dependency in matters related to energy. Raúl Campos, director of investor relations at Petrobrás, said that Gazprom had emerged as an interesting prospective partner because of its experience with long-distance pipelines. Petrobrás president José Sérgio Gabrielli said that the conversations with Gazprom were in the 'very early stages' and that it was still too soon to say whether any of the cooperation ideas would gel.

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