Headlines

Pedro Parente is on a mission to restore financial health and public trust to Petrobras, the Brazilian state-controlled oil company that for the past two years has been at the center of the country’s biggest-ever corruption scandal, Bloomberg News reported. A veteran business leader, Parente said his immediate task as the new chief executive officer of the world’s most indebted crude producer is slashing leverage without turning to the government for a bailout. Then the company will be able to focus on accelerating deep-water projects through greater cooperation with its partners, he said.

In a sign of the scramble it’s become to secure financing in Canada’s energy patch, lenders are revising one company’s debt repayment deadline daily, Bloomberg News reported. For the third straight day, Twin Butte Energy Ltd.’s bankers on Thursday agreed to extend the deadline to repay a C$85 million ($65 million) loan and ability to access its C$140 million existing revolving credit line, the company said in a statement.

A junior oil and gas company in Calgary is blaming an order aimed at protecting a rare Prairie bird for its insolvency, CTV News reported. LGX Oil + Gas says its daily operations and drilling plans were significantly disrupted when an emergency order under the federal Species At Risk Act took effect in February 2014 to protect the greater sage-grouse. The company's Manyberries oilfields in Alberta were subject to that order.

Brazil’s worst recession in recent history continued into 2016, data showed Wednesday, as rising unemployment and deepening political turmoil dragged the once-dynamic economy into its fifth consecutive quarter of decline, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product shrank 0.3% in the first quarter of 2016 from the previous three months in seasonally adjusted terms, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said.

Morocco's Casablanca appeals court upheld a ruling placing the country's sole oil refinery Samir into liquidation, the lawyer of the holding company that controls Samir said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Samir halted production in August due to financial difficulties, then a court ruling in March placed it in liquidation and named an independent trustee to run it. Its closure has made the country reliant on imports at a time when the North African kingdom is getting its finances back on track by tackling huge deficits.

China's manufacturing activity showed signs of steadying in May but remained weak amid soft demand at home and abroad, suggesting the world's second-largest economy is still struggling to regain traction, the International New York Times reported. A rebound in March had raised hopes that China's economy was reviving, breathing life into global financial and commodity markets, but analysts said the soggy activity readings and weak April data suggest no quick recovery is in sight.

An appeals court ruling on whether a Liberian mortgage is valid for a Brazilian-owned oil production ship, due on Wednesday, could cast doubt on the future of secured lending for such vessels in the world's largest deepwater market. The court in São Paulo is due to decide on the appeal by Nordic Trustee ASA to overturn a February ruling that the $500 million mortgage registered in Liberia is invalid for the OSX3 floating production, storage and offloading vessel, or FPSO, owned by a subsidiary of OSX Brasil SA.

When he took office, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to restore Japan’s economy to robust health and win the country’s long battle with deflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. Wednesday’s decision by Mr. Abe to put off a planned tax increase is a stark signal that he hasn’t delivered yet, and it isn’t clear when he can. The move risks making it harder for Japan to lighten its enormous debt burden. But as Mr. Abe saw it, his country’s economic weakness left him little choice.

Britain’s departure from the EU poses as big a threat to the global economy as a “hard landing” in China, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has said, The Guardian reported. The Paris-based thinktank said Brexit would have significant costs not just for the UK and Europe, but for the rest of the world. Catherine Mann, the chief economist at the OECD, said the uncertainty caused by the referendum came at a time when the global economy was caught in a low-growth trap.

The European Central Bank at a policy meeting on Thursday is expected to leave its €1.8 trillion ($2 trillion) stimulus package unchanged and to raise its inflation forecasts for the first time in a year, in a nod to higher oil prices, The Wall Street Journal reported. But nearly 18 months into its massive bond-purchase program, data published Tuesday show that the ECB is still far from hitting its inflation goal of around 2%.