por dlr » 25 Nov 2010, 01:52
Eika Batista is here. He is the richest person in Brazil, he may very well become the richest person in the world because of his oil holdings off the coast of Brazil. He has vast holdings in a number of businesses in Brazil. It is an interesting time to talk about him, to talk about Rio de Janeiro, the place that he loves, and also to talk about the Latin American experience. I am pleased to have him here for the first time.
Thank you Charlie, thank you for having me.
Fifteen years from now, what is it you want to have achieved?
We have created a base through our different companies, oil being the biggest one, to basically have a 10 year growth history. This is quite unique, the main reason for this is because we found rich oil fields. Rich and big oil fields. So they will help us basically to create a 10 year growth story (?) which is very unique. I think by 2020, Brazil... actually the president is saying, and we believe that, by 2015 already Brazil should be the 5th largest economy in the world. And we are just one of the few... many companies that is helping Brazil grow. And obviously oil.. the oil discoveries are so big that they will make a big change, they will make a big change to any country. You know.. Brazil has found ... we're talking about 100 Billion barrels of recoverable oil.. is the potential for the Brazilian oil bases.
Is most of that oil gonna come from the deep end of it, or the more shallow end?
I think one of the different things in our company is that 85%, in our case, is from shallow waters. Ok, so no technology - "shelf" technology as I like to call it - $8 lifting cost oil. So this is really profitable oil production.
Alright let me go back now. Your father is a very distinguished Brazilian. Ran a... had a mining [company] I think... CVRD... then he ran BALE (?). You received your education in Germany?
Yes, now basically I was, up to my 12th year, I was educated in Brazil. Then up to my 22nd... year of age I spent in Europe basically following my father, who back then was internationalizing CVRD... you know, was creating the offshore offices for the company.
You went to college there. Yes. Studied metallurgy? Yes. What influence did he have, and does he continue to have one?
What my father taught me.. what I learned from him is to think big, because he built the... you know there's a movie in Brazil now called Brazil's Engineer.. it's about him.. because he built part of Brazil's macro-infrastructure - railways, superports, to ship iron ore to Asia, back then to Japan. And so I learned to think big. But I was educated by my mother, because my father, you know, back then as a government officer he was very busy and not much with us. I'm 1 of 7, I'm the second. And so my mother, you know, she taught me discipline, she was German, from Hamburg, and so she taught me discipline and care.. you know, caring for others, which is very much what I got from her. Which really forged me in many ways.
You went back to Brazil, and at age... what? 23?
I went... You started out with a gold mine in the Amazon?
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That's all I have time for!