Brazilian federal energy company Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) CEO, José Sérgio Gabrielli, has announced the company is likely to increase investments in petrochemicals in 2008-12.
The executive was speaking at the Brazilian chemical industry annual meeting last week in São Paulo.
"We are concluding our 2008-12 business plan and reviewing upwards investments in petrochemicals for the period," Gabrielli said.
The company had announced investments of US$8.6bn for this sector in the five-year period and is expected to publish on December 19 the revised version of the US$112bn strategic plan.
Of the total planned investment, 85% is for domestic projects, Gabrielli said.
"Petrobras contributes 10% to the country's total GDP," he added.
COMPERJ
Petrobras remains on schedule for the construction of the Rio de Janeiro Comperj petrochemical complex, which is expected to start operations in 2012.
The complex will have one basic petrochemical unit with capacity to process 150,000b/d and eight resin production units. The company will produce 850,000t/y of polypropylene (PP), 800,000t/y of polyethylene (PE), 600,000t/y of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), 600,00t/y of ethylene glycol, 500,000t/y of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and 500,000t/y of styrene.
According to Gabrielli, Comperj will be an integrated complex that through new technologies will process crude oil to obtain first and second generation petrochemicals and derivatives.
Planned investments in Comperj are expected to total US$8.4bn.
"Due to the project's maturing technical conditions and the current economic environment, investments are expected to be higher," Gabrielli said.
NAPHTHA
When questioned about naphtha derived from the recently discovered pre-salt layer, Gabrielli said Petrobras could not guarantee it will boost production of the petrochemical raw material.
"There will be an improvement, but we don't know how much," the executive said.
According to Gabrielli, the pre-salt layer presents some challenges to the company such as the production process, logistics and technology.
"We want to increase investments in this area though, " he said.
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