Political pressures on Petrobras do not relent, but are nothing new

In 2023, Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, will turn 70. Throughout its existence, it has served as a major Rorschach test in Brazilian politics. To its supporters, it serves as a potent incubator for specialized Brazilian construction and engineering, driving the development of internationally competitive technical expertise in the multifaceted oil industry. 

For opponents, as the company has never really had to face competition from other private corporations in refining oil into products like gasoline, kerosene, and diesel, Petrobras is riddled with inefficiencies.

On the one hand, the company offers Brazil a measure of political and economic independence from more powerful players like the U.S. and Western Europe. 

After all, multinational oil conglomerates assisted in toppling unfriendly governments during the Cold War (most notably, Iran’s nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953). Accordingly, Petrobras allowed Brazil to breathe more easily, as Janary Gentil Nunes – the lieutenant-colonel who served as Petrobras’s third CEO – argued in 1957. Petrobras boosters point to oil’s strategic importance. Its extraction,...