The decision-making process of Petrobras international contracts

• Autor(a) principal: Lyra, Rodrigo Pedrosa
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/101/101131/tde-06062023-163929/
• topic: Energy politics; Foreign policy; MRE; MRE; PDVSA; PDVSA; Petrobras; Petrobras; Política energética; Política externa

Most of the differences between National Oil Companies (NOCs) and International Oil Companies (IOCs) are related to NOCs mixed objectives, as most NOCs must pursue national and commercial missions. Therefore, they do not perform as profit-maximising companies in all their operations. Based on DEA Analysis, we show that between 2011 and 2017, Petrobras was mainly below the performance of other oil companies, including other NOCs. As a NOC, Petrobras is not entirely forbidden to take non-commercial issues. However, Brazils Court of Auditors (TCU) claimed that Petrobras does not provide details on the relationship between the company and Brazils government and how this relationship may have affected the companys decision-making process. This thesis investigates who sets the agenda of Petrobras international contracts to understand if non-commercial goals (foreign policy and political parties interest) led to constraints in the companys ability to make autonomous decisions. We applied a mix-methods approach. First, we collected all Brazilian diplomatic cables from 1990 to 2019 and Petrobras financial reports from 2004 to 2012. Second, we conducted quantitative text analysis on these documents so as to measure the frequency of keywords on each database. Descriptive statistics showed us the most important international oil companies to be analysed. Based on this information, we did case studies on the major Petrobras international contracts signed with the major international oil companies. We crossed the information with diplomatic cables of the USAs Department of State, TCU, Brazils Chamber of Deputies, and Brazils Operation Car Wash on corrupt decisions taken by Petrobras former directors. We also collected diplomatic cables in London, Paris, and Montevideo. We argue that the initiators of Petrobras international contracts depend on the type of contract and the place of investment. We find political party initiative in all the joint-ventures contracts deemed, all related to international contracts that initially would count on PDVSAs partnership for projects in Brazil. On the other hand, concession contracts were settled by Petrobras board of directors, and we found no evidence of political parties interference in the negotiation process. However, the acquisition of assets in Uruguay, which started with the potential purchase of ANCAP and resulted in the purchase of Conecta SA, was the only case where we can affirm that MRE called the shots. Petrobras potential investments were crucial to bringing Uruguay closer to MERCOSUR in the context of the energy crisis in the 2000s. In the cases where MRE did not settle the agenda but got involved in the negotiation during the process, we find that MRE was interested in promoting Brazilian biofuels in some of the contracts, such as in Chile, and mediating the conflicted relationship between Petrobras and PDVSA. In most cases (Abreu and Lima, Ipiranga, and Bolivia), mediating market disputes between Petrobras and PDVSA explained MREs interest in Petrobras international contracts.