Brazil News

The cost of electricity from new power projects in Brazil fell to some of the lowest levels ever at an auction Tuesday, as competition among wind and hydroelectric projects pushed prices lower.

Brazilian power-distribution companies contracted 1,211.5 megawatts of new energy capacity to be brought online in 2016, mostly made up of wind-power projects, with some hydroelectric and biomass. The average price for all three types of energy was 102.18 Brazilian reais ($55.50) per megawatt-hour, the second-lowest price at a new energy auction since the current system began in 2004.

Brazil’s economy stalled in the third quarter of this year, demonstrating the vulnerability of the world’s emerging market growth engines to the eurozone crisis and the slowdown in the developed world.

Gross domestic product contracted 0.04 per cent in the three months ending on September 30 compared with the previous quarter as weakness in the industrial sector spread to Brazil’s once vibrant consumer.

A change in the way Brazil gauges inflation will help the central bank near its targets, enabling it to keep cutting interest rates, said Guilherme Figueiredo, hedge fund director at M. Safra & Co.

Figueiredo’s fund trimmed its 2012 inflation forecast to 5.35 percent from 5.65 percent, after the national statistics agency yesterday released new weightings for items in its benchmark IPCA price index, he said.

More than 2,600 barrels of oil may have spilled into the Atlantic ocean because of a leak at an offshore Chevron drilling site, Brazil’s environmental protection agency said Friday.

Officials think 200 to 330 barrels of oil leaked each day from Nov. 8 through Tuesday More >

US energy giant Chevron said Tuesday it had successfully sealed a ruptured offshore well which for the past week has seeped oil into waters off Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state.

The company “can currently advise that well control operations have been successful and that any fluid flow from the well appears to have ceased,” a Chevron statement said.

Brazil posted a trade surplus of $2.355 billion in October, beating forecasts for a third straight month after exports outpaced imports in the final days of the month following a recovery in global commodities prices.

The surplus reported by the trade ministry was more than double the median forecast of $1 billion according to 13 analysts polled by Reuters. It was highest trade surplus for the month of October since 2007.

Brazil’s state-run power utility Eletrobras could pare back ambitious investments in Latin America’s largest economy as the renewal of electric concessions threatens to pinch cash flow. More >

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista poured another 544 million reais ($309 million) into his oil and gas start-up OGX, the company said on Monday, consolidating his controlling stake after its shares lost nearly half their value this year.

OGX said in a security filing that Batista’s Centennial Asset Mining Fund bought up structured notes equivalent to 1.45 percent of the company’s capital.

Brazil’s industrial production fell in August after expanding less in July than originally reported, signaling an economic slowdown in Latin America’s largest economy.

Industrial production in Brazil fell 0.2 percent in August from a month earlier, More >

Brazil has set a high bar for providing support to the euro zone under a potential plan that would involve other large developing nations, demanding that the common currency bloc first find concrete solutions for its sovereign debt crisis.

“Europe has to save itself because it has the tools to resolve the sovereign debt problem of Greece and other countries and the problem of bank weakness,” Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said Tuesday.