A New Zealand court has delivered some good news for oil giant Petrobras but delays tapping huge fields in Brazilian waters have led to a damning verdict on its international performance.
A bid by Greenpeace and an iwi to quash a permit granted to the Brazilian company for exploration off the East Coast was thrown out by a High Court judge at Wellington on Friday.
The applicants claimed the Government failed to meet environmental and consultation obligations under the Crown Minerals Act, Treaty of Waitangi obligations and international law.
Although an appeal is possible, the ruling will help clear an obstacle to Petrobras' work in the Raukumara Basin, although any drilling in what is frontier territory is still at least three years away. However, a Bloomberg report over the weekend finds Petroleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) is the worst investment among the world's biggest oil companies this year as Brazil's state-controlled producer suffers delays and cost overruns developing the largest oil finds in more than a decade.
Petrobras, as the world's biggest producer in waters deeper than 300m, has lost 22 per cent for investors this year in US dollar terms, the worst performance by oil companies with a market value of more than US$50 billion ($63 billion).
