With no competition, Petrobras won a bid this Friday (19) for the concession of an area in which it already operates a fuel receiving and storage terminal at the port of Santos. The state-owned company will pay the government R$ 558.2 million to occupy the space for another 25 years.
In the same auction and also without dispute, the government granted Fertilizantes Santa Catarina another fuel storage terminal at the port of Imbituba, on the coast of Santa Catarina. The company pledged to pay R$ 200 thousand for the concession.
The auction was celebrated by the Ministry of Infrastructure as “the biggest port auction in history”. The initial plan was to grant three areas, but one of them, also in Santos, had no proposals. The two granted areas have mandatory investments of R$700 million.
In both cases, the minimum value of the offer was R$1. Asked about the high value offered, the executive manager for Logistics Business Development at Petrobras, Andrea Damiani, said that the terminal is important to guarantee the operation of the four refineries in São Paulo. of the state-owned company.
“Without this infrastructure, our production in the state of São Paulo could be compromised. So, the asset has a value for Petrobras that is different from the value it has for other players,” stated the executive. “We don’t pay excessive amounts, we pay the adequate amount to guarantee Petrobras’ operation.”
The terminal is operated by Transpetro, the state-owned subsidiary for the transport sector. It had been operating precariously, with a contract that needed to be renewed every six months. According to Damiani, the victory of the state-owned company “ends a very complex chapter” in the company’s logistics.
“Now we have 25 years of legal stability to continue serving our clients,” he said. The investment foreseen in the contract, of R$ 678 million, will be destined to the construction of two new berths for the berths of ships and expansion of the fuel storage capacity.
According to the CEO of SPA (Santos Port Authority), Fernando Biral, the new concession will solve bottlenecks in the port’s fuel handling system. “The process solved problems that we’ve had for more than a decade,” he said.
The award paid by the auction winners will be allocated to the port authority for investments. The government intends to privatize the port of Santos in 2022, in a contract that provides for R$ 16 billion in investments in infrastructure improvement and modernization.
In 2021, the government has already granted 12 port terminals, with investments estimated at R$1.7 billion. Since 2019, says the national secretary of Ports, Diogo Pilone, 33 terminals have been leased. “This shows that it is a State agenda,” he stated.
In a speech after the auction, the Minister of Infrastructure, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas said that the value of the grants is not important in these auctions, but the investments in the modernization of the logistical infrastructure are.
“The idea that we had of an inefficient port sector, of bottlenecks, of a knot in our infrastructure is being left behind,” he said, noting that from now on, the government is also starting to grant the administration of ports, not just the terminals.
In the first quarter of 2022, tenders are scheduled for the sale of companies that manage the ports of Espírito Santo and Santos. The privatization of Santos, says Freitas, will open the way for other privatizations of ports, such as São Sebastião (SP) and Itajaí (SC).
“The same thing that happened in the air sector years ago will happen in the port sector,” he commented, citing the concession of airports previously operated by Infraero.
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