Brazil’s Mines and Energy Minister Adolfo Sachsida appeared before a joint session of multiple House committees this Tuesday. He had been invited to explain the country’s ongoing rise in fuel prices — gasoline at the pump has gotten 27 percent more expensive in the past year, while diesel prices have surged by over 50 percent.
Mr. Sachsida’s appearance in the House came amid renewed turbulence at Petrobras, Brazil’s mastodonic, state-controlled oil and gas firm — upon which the government has laid the blame for high fuel prices. After Petrobras announced a new price hike for gasoline and diesel last week, the outgoing CEO José Mauro Coelho was coerced into resigning on Monday.
Markets reacted negatively before rallying slightly late on Monday, but Petrobras shares were down by 1 percent on Tuesday.
Petrobras’s market value has plummeted by almost BRL 100 billion (USD 19.3 billion) since the Jair Bolsonaro government announced its intention of swapping out Mr. Coelho for Caio Paes de Andrade in late May.
Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies in Congress have singled out Petrobras and its policy of pegging prices to international rates as their scapegoat to explain rising fuel prices, accusing the listed company of failing to meet its social obligations as a state-owned entity and pursuing profit for minority shareholders at the cost of the Brazilian population.
But other than keeping up his aggressively critical rhetoric against Petrobras — jettisoning chief executives faster than you can say “international price parity” — and sponsoring a controversial law to cap state taxes on fuel, Mr. Bolsonaro has done very little to actually address the problem of rising fuel...
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