Brazil’s state-controlled oil company Petrobras has posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss after booking a large writedown for oil fields and other assets as oil prices slumped and refinery projects faltered.
The company, at the epicenter of Brazil’s massive corruption scandal, had a consolidated net loss of 36.9 billion reais ($10.2billion) in the fourth quarter.
The bigger-than-expected shortfall was 48% larger than the 26.6 billion-real loss a year earlier, the previous record. It also turned the company’s full-year 2015 result, which was positive through September, into a full-year loss.
For a second year in a row, chief executive Almir Bendine said, Petrobras will not pay dividends to either its government or non-government investors and it plans to make no bonus payments to employees.
Petrobras common shares fell 5.5% in after-hours electronic trading in New York, after the results were released.
The loss was driven by a 46% decline in the price of benchmark Brent crude oil LCOc1, a drop that has driven up losses and caused writedowns throughout the global oil industry.
Of the 46.4 billion reais written off in the quarter, 83% was for oil fields.
A year earlier, writedowns were also the cause of Petrobras losses, although they were largely related to the giant price-fixing, bribery and political kickback scandal that has roiled the company and help fuel calls for the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
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