Government postpones Petrobras shareholders’ meeting – 03/01/2023 – Market

After criticism from allies, the government announced this Wednesday (1st) a change in the list of nominees for Petrobras’ board of directors. It also decided to postpone the shareholders’ meeting that will elect the board, signaling that it will make further changes.

The initial list was drawn up by the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, and generated discomfort among allies and within the state-owned company itself, even being called “bolsonarista” by the company’s employee unions.

This Wednesday, the government announced the inclusion of economist Bruno Moretti in the list. Legislative consultant close to the PT bench, he held positions in ministries during the Dilma Rousseff government. He advised the president of Petrobras, Jean Paul Prates, in drafting a bill.

It has a position aligned with the government in relation to the fuel price policy of the state-owned company. In an interview with Rádio PT in March 2022, he defended that an integrated Petrobras can balance losses and gains between the areas of oil exploration and refining.

“These private agents that are not integrated, will charge higher prices”, he said, referring to private companies that negotiated refineries of the state-owned company. In fact, the case of Amazonas shows that prices skyrocketed after privatization.

He replaces the nomination of Wagner Victer, who was an employee of the state-owned company, occupied the Secretary of Energy, Naval Industry and Oil of Rio de Janeiro in the governments of Anthony and Rosinha Garotinho and chaired Cedae (State Water and Sewage Company).

Victer was the name of the Minister of Management and Innovation in Public Services, Esther Dweck. Silveira has four other names and two are appointed as independent directors. The nominations must be questioned in the internal committees for evaluating appointments to the state-owned company’s management.

Among Silveira’s nominees is the current secretary of Oil and Gas at the MME, Pietro Mendes, who was secretary of the ministry in the Jair Bolsonaro government, when the portfolio was commanded by Admiral Bento Albuquerque.

Mendes has experience in the sector, but his nomination must be questioned for violating the State-Owned Companies Law, which prohibits the participation of a person who occupies a position “of a special nature or of management and superior advice in public administration”.

In the current council election, two names appointed by Bolsonaro who held similar positions were rejected by the internal committee that evaluates the resumes: the then executive secretary of the Civil House, Jônathas Assunção, and the attorney general of the National Treasury, Ricardo Soriano.

For the committee, the two nominations would represent a conflict of interest between their actions in the state-owned company and in public power. The company’s board of directors ratified the rejection, but Bolsonaro overruled the decisions and appointed both.