Petrobras will not accept import parity, Prates says

Nicola Pamplona

Petrobras president Jean-Paul Prates said this Thursday (2nd) that the new pricing policy will continue to be linked to international quotations, but not necessarily taking into account the cost of importing products.

Prates said the current model, which provides for a uniform import price monitor known as PPI, obliges the company to set the price of its competitors, a strategy adopted by previous administrations that he said would benefit importers and open up. market.. “Why do I have to charge a competitor?” he asked. “As long as Petrobras has market share, he will take it.”

The prediction is that the company’s new pricing policy will begin to be discussed when the board and the board of directors are renewed, which should happen by May. There is no set formula yet, but import parity will no longer be mandatory.

Prets said he had received instructions from the government to follow all the rules for managing a state-owned company, and therefore the change in both the price policy and the dividend policy depended on the renewal of the company’s top management.

Both are the targets of severe PT criticism. In 2022, the year it used record fuel prices, Petrobras had the highest profit in the history of Brazilian public companies and announced a dividend distribution of up to 216 billion roubles.

“Petrobras will charge competitive prices for the national market, for its market, as it sees fit to guarantee its market share,” the executive said in his first press conference as Petrobras president.

Asked about the negative impact of price controls on PT administrations, he said it would not “cannibalize, destroy” the company’s profit margins. “But I can compete for my market on my margin. The intervener was the previous government who ordered me to apply PPI to benefit the importer.’

The determination to follow internal rules, he said, justifies the approval of a dividend of 35.8 billion rials to reward the shareholder for the fourth quarter 2022 profit. The new management has proposed to retain 6.5 billion ruan of this total, which. exceeded the volume defined by the current policy.

The preservation proposal will be presented at the shareholders’ meeting to be held at the end of April. The idea is to present an investment plan to the shareholder with these resources. In practice, however, the government has enough votes to approve the proposal without the need to convince a private investor.

Prates emphasized that the company will once again invest in renewable energy, focusing on offshore wind energy, which can have synergies with oil exploration and production.

He also said the company should follow the government’s directive to re-order platforms and ships domestically as long as the shipbuilding industry is able to place orders without charging much higher prices than alternatives abroad.

This plan, he said, will require coordinated actions with various state institutions, setting incentives for the return to work of shipyards. In the first PT administrations, orders in the shipbuilding sector were the target of Operation Lava Jato and ended with confessions of bribes and kickbacks.

“I think the country is getting more and more mature to deal with this issue,” he commented. “The fear of corruption cannot be an excuse to buy everything from abroad.”