Alison Sider – Wall Street Journal, 1/21/2014
For the services companies that help drill for oil, the water off Brazil is feeling chilly.
Brazil has been home to some of the largest oil discoveries in recent decades, and oilfield services companies, which provide the equipment and technical know-how to help extract that oil, have bid aggressively to work there. Halliburton Co.HAL +0.38%, one of the largest such companies, has won major contracts with Brazil’s state-run energy giant, Petroleo Brasileiro SAPETR4.BR +2.28%.
But work in new fields has been slower to start up than expected, leaving Halliburton on the hook for high infrastructure and personnel costs that it says are weighing on its otherwise robust earnings. On Tuesday the company reported that its fourth quarter profits rose 19% to $793 million on $7.6 billion in revenue, boosted by growing revenue from the company’s international operations.
Brazil Portal 