Allen & Overy's Tokyo-based banking and project finance partner Aled Davies has advised the lenders, which includes key client Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), on the US$900m structured financing of the modernisation of Petrobras' Henrique Lage Refinery in São José dos Campos, São Paulo State, Brazil.

JBIC was one of the senior lenders - which included a syndicate of commercial banks led by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation as mandated senior loan lead arranger - on the project which represents the latest in a series of Petrobras projects arranged by Japanese trading companies and financed with Japanese investment.

Davies led the A&O team - which included New York-based partner Robert Kartheiser - on the project, which involved the complex structuring of a loan to a Brazilian incorporated company indirectly owned by Mitsui & Co, Ltd and Itochu Corporation.

The loan was to finance the construction, by Toyo Engineering, of new assets and machinery to be installed at the Henrique Lage Refinery, one of Petrobras' newest and most important refineries.

The project will not only ensure that Brazil's refining capacity keeps pace with the country's recent status of oil production self-sufficiency and increase the capacity for Petrobras to produce cleaner refined product, but also strengthens the existing close energy ties between Brazil and Japan.

Just last month A&O advised JBIC and the commercial lenders on the financing of the third expansion of the world's largest ethylene glycol and polyethylene production project, owned by Eastern Petrochemical Company in Saudi Arabia.