Oil workers: Pedro Parente shows what he's made of.

By FUP

Upon assuming the Presidency of Petrobras this Thursday, the 02nd, Pedro Parente, a member of the PSDB party, made clear his intentions: to resume the privatization agenda that began during the FHC administration, when he approved in the Board of Directors changing the company's name to Petrobrax and handing over 30% of Refap to Repsol.

Now, the focus is on the pre-salt oil reserves, the trophy that José Serra and Michel Temer promised to deliver to the financiers of the coup. Pedro Parente arrived announcing that "Petrobras supports the revision of the pre-salt law," reinforcing what Temer had already announced: support for Bill 4567/2016, which is currently being processed in the Chamber of Deputies.

The goal is to remove Petrobras from its role as the sole operator and eliminate its minimum 30% stake in the licensed fields. If this happens, the company will lose 82 billion barrels of oil, considering estimates that the pre-salt layer has 273 billion barrels of reserves. What oil company in the world would give up all that oil, as the newly appointed president of Petrobras intends to do?

Tucanos promised to end the revenue-sharing regime.

The proposal that gave rise to Bill 4567/2016 has already been approved in the Senate, through Bill 131/2015, by José Serra, a member of the PSDB party and current Minister of Foreign Affairs, who, since 2010 when he was running for president, had promised Chevron and other multinational corporations to end the Pre-Salt Production Sharing Regime.

If the bill also passes through the Chamber of Deputies, it paves the way for resuming the concession model, as the coup plotters want. To prevent Bill 4567/2016 from being approved, oil workers have been staging major protests in Brasília. On the 14th, together with the Parliamentary Front in Defense of Petrobras, FUP, Aepet and FNP will hold a public event in defense of the pre-salt reserves, at the Nereu Ramos Auditorium in the Chamber of Deputies.

Pedro Parente's privatization DNA

Between March 1999 and December 2002, Pedro Parente actively participated in the Board of Directors of Petrobras, where he approved privatization measures that caused irreversible damage to the company.

• Changes to Petrobras' bylaws to facilitate the company's privatization, starting with opening its capital to foreign investors. The FHC government handed over 36% of Petrobras' state control to private shareholders, subjecting the company to the interests of the international market.

• The sale of 30% of the Alberto Pasqualini Refinery (Refap) to Repsol, in an asset swap carried out in December 2000, caused losses of US$ 2,3 billion to Petrobras. Oil workers denounced the deal, in which the state-owned company ceded US$ 3 billion in assets and received US$ 750 million in return. Pedro Parente is one of those accused in the lawsuit, which has been in court for 15 years, but only now has the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) approved an expert analysis of the contract between Petrobras and Repsol. In December 2010, after much struggle by the workers, Refap became 100% Petrobras again.

• The change of Petrobras' name to Petrobrax, a project budgeted at 50 million dollars, announced at the end of December 2000, aimed to remove the "BR" and the green and yellow colors from the company, annihilating its national identity to facilitate privatization. Various sectors of civil society mobilized, and the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) was forced to back down.

• Partnership agreements between Petrobras and the private sector, between 2000 and 2003, for the construction of thermoelectric power plants, committing to guarantee the remuneration of investors, even if the companies did not generate profit. The value of the plants was equivalent to one-third of the so-called "contingency contributions," which generated losses of more than US$ 1 billion for Petrobras.