- In milestone, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- In a first, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- Bangladeshi Hindus shrug off attack worries to celebrate festival
- Ubisoft fears assassin's hit over falling sales
- Vietnam, China hold talks on calming South China Sea tensions
- SpaceX will try to 'catch' giant Starship rocket shortly before landing
- Japan's former empress Michiko discharged after surgery: reports
- Japan's former empress Michiko discharged after surgey: reports
- 'Little Gregory' murder haunts France 40 years on
- Tariffs, tax cuts, energy: What is in Trump's economic plan?
- Amazon wants to be everything to everyone
- Jewish school in Canada hit by gunfire for second time
- With medical report Harris seeks to play health card against Trump
- China-EU EV tariff talks in Brussels end with 'major differences': Beijing
- Buried Nazi past haunts Athens on liberation anniversary
- Harris to release medical report confirming fitness for presidency: campaign
- Nobel prize a timely reminder, Hiroshima locals say
- China offers $325 bn in fiscal stimulus for ailing economy
- Small Quebec company dominates one part of NHL hockey: jerseys
- Boeing to cut 10% of workforce as it sees big Q3 loss
- Want to film in Paris? No sexism allowed
- US, European markets rise as investors weigh rates, earnings
- In Colombia, children trade plastic waste for school supplies
- JPMorgan Chase profits top estimates, bank sees 'resilient' US economy
- Little progress at key meet ahead of COP29 climate summit
- 'Party atmosphere': Skygazers treated to another aurora show
- Kyrgyzstan opens rare probe into glacier destruction
- European Mediterranean states discuss Middle East, migration
- Thunberg leads pro-Palestinian, climate protest in Milan
- Stock markets diverge before China weekend briefing
- EU questions shopping app Temu over illegal products risk
- Han Kang's books sell out in South Korea after Nobel win
- Shanghai markets sink ahead of briefing on mixed day for Asia
- Investors, analysts eye bigger China stimulus at Saturday briefing
- Musk unveils robotaxi, pledges it 'before 2027'
- At least 11 dead in Florida but Hurricane Milton not as bad as feared
- Asian markets mixed after Wall St drop, Shanghai dips before briefing
- Automaker Stellantis says CEO will retire in 2026
- Musk's promised robotaxi unveil delayed
- On US coast, wind power foes embrace 'Save the Whales' argument
- At least 10 dead in Florida after Hurricane Milton spawns tornadoes
- Internet Archive reels from 'catastrophic' cyberattack, data breach
- Wall Street stocks retreat from records on US inflation data
- Israel strikes central Beirut, killing 22
- Solar storm could impact US hurricane recovery efforts: agency
- Delta eyes Election Day travel pullback as profits climb
- Florida battered by hurricane, floods but spared 'worst-case scenario'
- UK's William and Kate in first joint public engagement since cancer treatment
- Over 200 women in legal talks with Harrods over Fayed abuse claims
- A very stiff breeze: BBC says sorry for 20,000 kph wind forecast
Brazil's Petrobras scraps international price peg
Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras said Tuesday it has ended its policy of pegging fuel prices to the international market, an overhaul promised by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that had initially triggered investor jitters.
Petrobras, whose prices essentially determine how much Brazilians pay at the pump, said it would still set them using "market references."
But it said in a statement that the announcement "puts an end to the mandatory subordination (of prices) to the import parity price" in US dollars.
Veteran leftist Lula, who took office for a third term in January, had vowed during his election campaign to "Brazilianize" the company's pricing policy, saying Brazilians' fuel prices should not soar every time the dollar strengthens against the real.
But Petrobras investors had resisted changes to the policy, which helped Brazil's biggest company deliver record profits of $36 billion last year thanks to the global surge in fuel prices.
Petrobras followed up the policy change by announcing hefty price cuts almost immediately, of 12.6 percent for gasoline, 12.7 percent for diesel and 21.4 percent for cooking gas.
"With this commercial strategy, Petrobras will be more efficient and competitive," the company's chief executive Jean Paul Prates said in the statement.
"We will continue to be the market reference, without abdicating the competitive advantages of being a company with tremendous production capacity, infrastructure... and nationwide transportation," added Prates, a former senator named to the post by Lula in January.
Markets welcomed the announcement, with analysts saying investors had feared a more radical overhaul of the international price peg policy, which had been in place since 2016.
Petrobras shares rose more than four percent on the Sao Paulo stock exchange before settling back to gains of around three percent.
"The market was expecting something much worse, a direct intervention" by the government in price-setting, said oil industry analyst Israel Rodrigues, of Genial Investimentos.
Brazilians have suffered recently as the Ukraine war drove international oil prices to multi-year highs, triggering painful inflation that became a central issue in Lula's election battle last year against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
St.Ch.Baker--CPN