By Jeb Blount

SAO JOAO DA BARRA, Brazil, June 8 (Reuters) – The launch this week of Prumo Logistica’s $3.7 billion Port of Açu, the biggest in Latin America, marked the revival of a Brazilian logistics hub many thought doomed when the empire of its former billionaire proprietor collapsed.

Açu’s greater than 25 km (15.5 miles) of docks, piers and breakwaters is a much-needed step in the direction of narrowing a crippling infrastructure hole in Latin America’s largest financial system.

The Manhattan-sized industrial complicated northeast of Rio de Janeiro, which formally opened on Tuesday, nonetheless, stays a far cry from the plans drafted by Eike Batista earlier than his $60 billion EBX industrial empire disappeared nearly in a single day in 2013.

While Batista envisioned a thriving hub of shipyards, metal mills and electric-car factories, a lot of the large complicated stays a quiet expanse of bird-flocked dunes and swamp.

Batista ceded management of Açu three years in the past to Washington, D.C.-based EIG Energy Partners in trade for a promise to speculate $562 million within the unfinished port.

“Açu is doing well because the port was based on solid ideas,” stated Jose Magela, CEO of Prumo, which is 74 p.c owned by EIG.

So far, Açu has been most tasty for oil-related ventures. About 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Rio, it sits apart waters accountable for 80 p.c of Brazil’s oil output. The petroleum trade accounts for greater than a tenth of the nation’s gross home product.

On Tuesday, Prumo opened Brazil’s first unbiased crude-oil terminal in partnership with Germany’s Oiltanking GmbH.

It can switch as much as 1.2 million barrels a day from shuttle tankers loaded at offshore fields to long-haul vessels. Royal Dutch Shell Plc has a contract to switch as a lot as 300,000 barrels a day of its rising Brazilian output on the terminal, Prumo stated.

A brand new maritime diesel terminal run by Britain’s BP Plc simply offered its first gas for ships working in adjoining deepwater fields. Prumo’s common cargo docks exports bauxite for Brazilian industrial conglomerate Votorantim Participações SA.

Louisiana-based ship and oil service firm Edison Chouest expects to finish its largest offshore oil provide base exterior the United States at Açu in 2017.

For Brazil’s authorities, scuffling with its greatest recession in a long time, the port is a lifeline. More than a decade of government-led infrastructure spending has didn’t make exports aggressive.

It is relying on personal funding to revive an oil trade, scuffling with low costs. State-controlled oil large Petrobras is crippled by debt and corruption.

“The government has signaled a new phase of private sector interaction,” Transportation Minister Mauricio Quintella stated. “Everyone knows the budget restrictions that Brazil faces.”

Among the almost 200 authorities officers, traders, politicians and executives flown in for the ceremony, one particular person was notably absent: Batista.

Asked if an invite was prolonged to Batista, who misplaced Brazil’s largest private fortune when mission delays and overreach saddled his sprawling empire with debt, Prumo executives shrugged. “I don’t know,” CEO Magela stated.

Batista was banned from working public corporations for 5 years by the CVM markets regulator final yr for conflicts of curiosity at his oil firm OGX.

Eucherio Rodrigues, who was briefly chief monetary officer of Batista’s shipbuilding unit OSX after its chapter submitting, stated the tycoon’s absence was unfair.

“Açu was a great idea and will be a great port, but Eike’s timing was poor and he made many mistakes,” Rodrigues stated. ($1 = 3.387 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Jeb Blount Editing by W Simon)

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