Petrobras Board approves Lula’s nominee for presidency

The board of directors of Petrobras approved this Thursday (26) the appointment of Jean Paul Prates to the presidency of the state-owned company. He has already resigned from his term in the Senate, which would end in February, which should speed up the inauguration.

Petrobras has not yet announced the result of the meeting, but the Sheet found that the approval was unanimous, even though the collegiate today is made up mostly of people aligned with the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

The expectation is that Prates will start announcing the names that will compose the company’s board later this week, in an effort to speed up the evaluation by the internal committee that analyzes the resumes of the nominees for the company’s management.

According to Petrobras, Prates has already taken over as president of the company and as a member of the board of directors. The mandates approved this Thursday will run until April 13, when the mandates of the current administration expire.

It will be renewed at a general meeting of shareholders in April, when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) must also renew the board of directors of the state-owned company, today composed of six Bolsonaro appointees, four representatives of minority shareholders and a representative of workers.

The appointment of Prates this Thursday was facilitated by the resignation of the previous president, Caio Paes de Andrade, who had been appointed by Bolsonaro and left the company to take over as secretary in the government of São Paulo.

For now, there are two main names quoted for the company’s board, who also participated in the transition team: economist William Nozaki, from the Institute for Strategic Studies on Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels; and Maurício Tolmasquim, who commanded EPE (Empresa de Pesquisa Energética) in PT administrations.

The approval of the name was celebrated by the company’s employee unions, which had strong clashes with the presidents of the state-owned company during the Bolsonaro government.

Prates’ colleague in the government’s transition team, the general coordinator of the FUP (Federação Única dos Petroleiros), Deyvid Bacelar said that his appointment is “yet another demonstration of the government’s commitment to the Brazilian people and national sovereignty”.

“The approval of Jean Paul Prates for the presidency of Petrobrás represents the beginning of a new era towards growth and the resumption of the company’s role as an inducer of the country’s economic and social development”, he said, in a note.

Prates will take over Petrobras shortly after the first readjustment in the price of gasoline in the Lula government, announced this Tuesday, a decision criticized by the FUP (United Federation of Petroleum Workers), which appointed a representative for the transition team of the elected government.

He defends changes in the company’s pricing policy, eliminating the concept of import parity, which simulates how much it would cost to bring products from abroad and was implemented in the Michel Temer (MDB) government.

The new government also wants a Petrobras more focused on investment than on shareholder remuneration, returning to segments abandoned in previous administrations, such as fertilizers, petrochemicals and renewable energies.

In 2022, Petrobras closed the first quarter as the largest dividend payer in the world, a reflection of a policy of reducing investments and costs, combined with the increase in international oil prices after the most critical period of the pandemic.

In November, one day after disclosing the fourth highest profit ever recorded by a company in the country, the company’s shares plummeted on Stock Exchanges, in the face of fears over political uncertainties and changes in the shareholder remuneration policy.