Exploration on the equatorial margin is a matter for the State, says Prates

The decision whether Petrobras can drill for oil exploration on the equatorial margin is an issue that is being evaluated by the Brazilian State, said this Wednesday (19) the president of the state-owned company, Jean Paul Prates. According to him, the issue involves several bodies, including the Civil House and the Attorney General’s Office (AGU). “It is the Brazilian State moving to resolve this issue internally,” he said during a meeting with journalists this Wednesday (19) at the Leopoldo Américo Miguez de Mello Research, Development and Innovation Center (Cenpes), belonging to Petrobras, on Ilha do Fundão, in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro.

Petrobras’ Director of Exploration and Production, Joelson Mendes, said that technically the company’s geoscientists say that the extensive equatorial margin that runs from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte is the last great Brazilian exploratory frontier. In the director’s view, it is something that can change the game, just as it happened with the deep waters of the Campos Basin and the pre-salt layer, given that there is a limit in these areas.

“These basins will reach maturity, pre-salt production will reach its peak around 2030, 2032 and for Brazilian energy security. For us, as a company, to be able to survive as an oil exploration company, we need new exploratory frontiers, that’s why all our efforts to bring the best techniques and our entire history as a company that takes care of people, the environment and society, so that we can get the license to drill on the equatorial margin”, he noted, defending exploration on the equatorial margin.

dividends

The Financial and Investor Relations Director, Sérgio Caetano Leite, said that the new rules of the company’s dividend policy are being prepared by a working group that should complete everything by the end of this month. The expectation is that they will be known in the disclosure of the company’s balance sheet for the second quarter. The director does not participate in the group for reasons of company governance and stated that for this reason he cannot advance the distribution percentage.

Leite believes that the distribution period may remain on a quarterly basis, but highlighted that, after the working group’s analysis is concluded, it will have to be approved by the Board of Directors. “Every time it deliberates, it deliberates the payment of current dividends, so we will have a deliberation on the payment of the second quarter, which should already occur based on the new rule”, he added.

Petrobras’ intention is to reduce the distribution of dividends and, with the difference, be able to expand investments.

Conflict

On several occasions during the meeting with journalists, the president denied the existence of a crisis, neither rhetorically nor operationally, with the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Ferreira, who demands the company’s supply of natural gas to the Brazilian market.

“It is also natural (the minister to charge). It has to end this stir that the minister is fighting. He’s not fighting. He is a minister, he has to charge for everything. He has to oversee mining, the electricity sector, Petrobras. He has the right to charge, he has the right to receive information. No one is going to take conflict out of me for nothing. I respect the minister, the ministers, the President of the Republic, they are the majority and controlling shareholders of the company, but we do our job and explain things, as we are explaining to society. The fact is that we are doing our job correctly. Nobody deliberately withholds gas or fails to monetize gas because they want to”, he assured.