Global Trade Alert

 On 25 April 2013, the UK Export Finance agency announced it would guarantee an export contract worth up to 1 billion USD for exploration and production facilities of Petrobras, if British companies would win their relevant tenders. As specified in the UKEF Notice, "UK exporters will be identified when Petrobras nominates supplies to be sourced from UK for financing out of the line of credit. UK Export Finance will approve each export contract to be financed out of the line of credit".
The project includes inter alia the construction of subsea oil and gas pipelines, the installation of FPSO (floating, production, storage and offloading) vessels and the drilling of production and injection wells in currently operated production fields.
A state measure in the GTA database is assessed solely in terms of the extent to which its implementation affects the extent of discrimination against foreign commercial interests. As access to such lines of credit can be advantageous and, in some cases, a pre-requisite for bidding for contracts such as these, then this measure discriminates against British rivals.