Following a $2.6 billion bond issue earlier this year, OGX will not need to sell off stakes in his fields that had reportedly drawn the interest of Chinese state-run oil companies including Sinopec and CNOOC, said Batista, who Forbes has ranked the world’s 8th richest man.
“The bond issue, which was spectacular, completely covered the need for cash,” Batista said in an interview with Reuters.
“We brought in exactly what we needed to live off our own spoils.”
In an interview with reporters at Reuters’ headquarters on Friday, Batista struck a defiant tone in the face of a quickly worsening global economy.
Batista called his investments “idiot-proof,” and insisted that his $30 billion industrial empire could easily sustain a sharp drop in commodities prices, and is amply funded with $10 billion in cash and credit lines.
OGX soon will sign a supply agreement with one of the world’s “top 3” oil companies for the first oil that the company produces, from the Waimea area off Brazil’s coast, he said.
“When we sign that contract, the world will see the quality of our oil,” he said, declining to identify the name of the company because of securities regulations.
Batista said he expects his five publicly listed companies, which range from oil and gas production to mining and logistics, to generate $1 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2012.
Those companies -- most of which are not yet generating profits — will be able to pay shareholders dividends by 2014 as they generate more cash, he said.
Batista said the low costs of his shallow water offshore oil production in Brazil, which he expects to begin in November, would allow OGX to break even if world oil prices fell as low as $24 a barrel.
Batista himself expects benchmark Brent oil prices to
average a much higher $90 a barrel in the future.
OGX shares were up 1.1 percent to 11.71 reais per share in trading on Brazil’s Bovespa exchange on Friday.
“In Brazil, oil has moved the needle big-time,” Eike told Reuters Insider, estimating that Brazil’s total production could grow to 6 million barrels a day (bpd) from around 2 million bpd now, as OGX and others tap new discoveries.
“That could add up to $150 billion a year.”
OGX has focused its Brazilian drilling program in shallow waters offshore southeastern Brazil, where the costs of drilling for and producing crude is lower than some of the ultra-deep new discoveries that state-controlled Petrobras has been drilling.
