Lula da Silva fires Petrobras president

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday suspended Jean-Paul Prates, president of state oil company Petrobras, after months of disagreements with some executive ministers.

Prates has held this position since January 2023, when he was appointed by Lula himself, who had just taken office as President of Brazil.

Petrobras confirmed in the note that Prates had asked the government-controlled board of directors to “meet to consider early termination of his mandate” as company president “in a negotiated manner.”

“Once the said closure is approved, he intends to subsequently resign from his position as a member of the board of directors of Petrobras,” the statement further said.

According to local press reports, Lula nominated Magda Chambriard, who was director of the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) in the government of Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), for this position.

After graduating in law and economics and with more than 30 years of experience in the oil sector, Prates left his seat in the Senate to head Petrobras, a company controlled by the Brazilian state but whose shares were traded on the stock exchanges of Sao Paulo, New York and Madrid. .

During his term, Prates reaffirmed the oil company’s strategic nature as an engine of economic growth for the country, in line with Lula’s vision.

He announced an ambitious investment plan of $102 billion (about 94.3 billion euros) for the period 2024 to 2028, changed the pricing policy and restarted work with a greater emphasis on business areas that were paralyzed during the government of Jair Bolsonaro ( 2019-2022), such as processing.

The oil company’s 2023 net profit fell 33.8% from 2022, and in the first quarter of this year it recorded a 37.9% drop year-on-year, according to results released at the fair on Monday.

It was at the end of the first quarter that an internal crisis arose related to the payment of extraordinary dividends for the 2023 financial year.

This dividend debate raised doubts about Prates’s succession after falling out with some of Lula’s government ministers, and also led to the company’s fall from the stock market.

Prates was in favor of distribution, but the government was against this measure.

At the height of this controversy, Lula said in an interview with SBT television that he wanted the oil company’s extraordinary profits not to be distributed, but to be reinvested, since Petrobras “must think about the 200 million Brazilians who own the company.” “.

Finally, the head of state approved the payment of 50% of extraordinary dividends for 2023 to shareholders and considered the crisis over.

However, this Tuesday Lula decided to change the direction of Petrobras on the eve of a trip to the state of Rio Grande do Sul, devastated by serious flooding.