What A Difference A Day Makes

Yesterday we had Petrobras begging for mercy: Petrobras president sees funding risk from crisis.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 18 (Reuters) - The crisis hitting global markets could make it more difficult for Brazil oil giant Petrobras (PBR) to fund its ambitious plans to tap vast deep-water oil reserves, the company's president said on Thursday.

"Imagine the volume of finances we need. It will be difficult to raise resources if this little country in the north keeps falling," Jose Sergio Gabrielli said, in an apparent reference to the United States.

"You can imagine the problems."

Gabrielli made the remarks in a speech at the end of the four-day Rio Oil and Gas conference, dominated by the state-owned firm's massive new offshore oil discoveries that could catapult Brazil into the world's top 10 producers.

The firm needs to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years to tap the oil, which lies up to 7 km (4.3 miles) below a thick layer of salt.

The financial crisis could squeeze funding sources for Petrobras and its suppliers of crucial equipment, such as the deep-sea oil rigs that can cost more than $500 million each to build.

Petrobras has leased about 80 percent of the world's deepest-drilling offshore rigs and plans to double its rigs in deep and ultra-deep water to 63 by 2017. Twenty-eight of the new rigs are to be built in Brazil.

The crisis has "consequences that are not yet fully realized in financing this market," Gabrielli added.

Today we have BRIC countries leading the strongest rally in 20 years: Russia, Brazil Lead Record Emerging Market Gain; Bonds Rally.

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Emerging-market stocks surged the most in 20 years and currencies and bonds soared after central banks pumped cash into credit-markets, shoring up confidence and luring investors back to riskier assets.

Russia, China and Brazil led the rally as every emerging stock market but Pakistan gained. Russia's Micex Index rose the most ever as President Dmitry Medvedev pledged $20 billion to end the nation's worst financial crisis since the 1998 default. China's CSI 300 Index rose a record 9.3 percent. Latin American currencies surged, led by a 6.3 percent jump in the Colombian peso. Emerging-market bonds rallied the most since 2001.

Why was Pakistan the only emerging market not to gain? Because they are the only totalitarian country besides the U.S.S.A. authoritarian enough to institute a shortsale ban.

Here is a chart sent to me by industry sources: