Marcelo Zero: Petrobras is being dismantled and that's a crime.
Sociologist Marcelo Zero states that the coup against Dilma Rousseff destroyed the "process of leveraging national development and ended this sovereign and developmentalist policy"; "First of all, it ended the local content policy, dismantling the entire oil chain," he says; "Petrobras is being dismantled and denationalized."
247 - Sociologist Marcelo Zero states that the coup against Dilma Rousseff destroyed the "process of leveraging national development and ended this sovereign and developmentalist policy." "First of all, it ended the local content policy, disrupting the entire oil chain. Currently, foreign oil companies can import platforms, rigs, and everything else directly from abroad, generating jobs overseas. Furthermore, thanks to the absurd Provisional Measure 745, they can do so without paying taxes. We are subsidizing the imports of large multinational oil companies," says the scholar in a text published on the GR-RI Blog, in Carta Capital.
"The second major decision of the coup government was to dismantle and privatize Petrobras itself. In this way, Petrobras was stripped of its status as the sole operator of the pre-salt fields, and a process of 'disinvestment' (sale of assets) worth approximately 19 billion dollars was initiated. In addition to selling oil fields at ridiculously low prices, the disinvestment plan also affects distributors and transporters (pipelines), petrochemical complexes, and refineries. Petrobras is being dismantled and denationalized," he adds.
According to the scholar, "in addition to dismantling the national oil supply chain and Petrobras itself, with the aim of privatizing it, the coup-installed management of the company practices an irrational pricing policy, automatically linked to exchange rate fluctuations and international oil prices, plus subjective 'political risks'." "The objective is to lavishly reward the company's private shareholders, mainly foreign ones, to the detriment of the public interest and the well-being of the population. In less than 2 years, they readjusted the price of diesel 229 times."
The sociologist adds that "the present damage is very great, as was evident in the truckers' strike." "But the greater damage, much greater, is the harm to Brazil's future. The pre-salt oil fields, and everything they could generate for the country and its people, are being appropriated by multinational corporations and their few (and wealthy) Brazilian private partners. Future generations, who could benefit from these fantastic resources, are being deprived of opportunities, education, and quality of life. It's a crime."