Miguel Menchen Alumbreros, who worked as executive director for Telefonica Moviles in Spain and Morocco, has been appointed chairman of Telefonica Moviles Mexico. Jose Moles, who resigned in September, will assume Telefonica CTC´s chairmanship in Chile. Telefonica Moviles has a 14 percent market share in Mexico, with 5.8 million clients.
Category: Regions
Posted inDaily Brief
Ecuador Wants Grace Period
Ecuador has asked for a grace period of six months before starting to pay for 660,000 barrels of crude oil to be supplied by Venezuela. State-owned firm Petroecuador had to suspend its oil exports last Thursday due to a protest in two oil-rich provinces in the Amazon. The energy ministry says crude oil production has returned to 84 percent of normal.
Posted inDaily Brief
Mexico: Central Bank Rejects Bids
Mexico’s central bank rejected banks’ bids to drive down interest rates in a daily auction Thursday, signaling it may hold off on cutting the benchmark lending rate at a policy meeting Friday. Banco de Mexico turned down bids by banks to borrow for 12 days at 9.5 percent, but accepted 2.5 billion pesos of bids to borrow for 12 days at a rate of 9.75 percent.
Posted inDaily Brief
S&P May Cut Ecuador´s Rating
Standard & Poor’s warned it may cut Ecuador’s ‘CCC+’ long-term sovereign credit rating as heightened political risk increases doubts over the country’s ability to pay its debts. Protesters last week crippled the country’s oil industry and helped jack up petroleum prices by dynamiting pipelines and vandalizing pumping equipment at installations of state-owned Petroecuador in the eastern part of the country. The Ecuadorean army has moved into the area and the government is working to get crude production back on-line.
Posted inDaily Brief
Mexican Exports Fall
Mexico’s exports fell 8.8 percent in July from the previous month to $16.5 billion as US automakers curbed production at their Mexican factories. The country´s trade deficit rose to $620 million. The export data comes after Mexico´s GDP expanded a less-than-expected 3.1 percent in the second quarter, a seasonally adjusted decline of 0.42 percent. The country’s industrial output growth slowed more than expected in June, rising 0.7 percent from the year-earlier period.
Posted inDaily Brief
Pemex Finishes Plants
State-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos completed construction of two natural gas processing plants in Cuenca de Burgos. The plants cost $166 million to produce and will help double the firm´s daily natural gas processing capacity from 400 to 800 million cubic feet.
Posted inDaily Brief
Ecuador Begins Talks with Protestors
Ecuador´s government opened talks with protest leaders who have choked off the country´s oil exports, but officials said a full recovery in production was a long way off. Oil exports remain suspended Monday but production has risen as the army took control of oil fields that had been under siege, allowing workers to repair damage. Output by state-controlled Petroecuador totaled 70,000 barrels Monday, compared to Saturday´s 33,000 but well under the 200,000 bpd level before the protests began last week. Ecuadorean Energy Minister Ivan Rodriguez said some oil wells may have been permanently damaged by the attacks and may be unable to return to normal activity.
Posted inDaily Brief
PDVSA Sees Growth in China
Petroleos de Venezuela announced that it expects crude oil exports to China to rise more than fourfold to 300,000 barrels of oil a day by 2012. Sales to China have averaged about 69,000 barrels a day this year. President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly said that he wants Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, to diversify customers and reduce its dependence on the US market. The US currently receives about 60 percent of Venezuela’s daily exports of about 2 million barrels.
Posted inDaily Brief
Telefonica Moviles to Issue Bonds
Spain´s Telefonica Moviles plans to issue $1.1 billion worth of bonds in the Mexican market. The operation will be divided into three tranches and the first issuance is set to happen by late 2005 or early 2006. Standard & Poor recently assigned its mxAAA rating to Telefonica Moviles´ Mexican unit.
Posted inDaily Brief
Chavez Offers Help
Venezuela´s President Hugo Chavez offered to provide Ecuador with free oil, which Quito will return with its own crude when its production is restored. Chavez also said he would like Ecuador to be a member of the Petroandina system, wherein member countries would help each other deal with decreased production caused by strikes or other shocks. Venezuela´s own PDVSA suffered a crippling strike in late 2002 and early 2003.