MOSCOW (MRC) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro reiterated on Monday that he is considering the privatization of state-run oil company Petrobras, formally known as Petroleo Brasileiro SA, boosting its shares along with news of a fresh price hike in the domestic gasoline and diesel market, reported Reuters.
"This is on our radar," the far-right president said during a radio interview. "But privatizing a company is not just putting it on a shelf and whoever offers the highest bid takes it, it is very complicated."
Bolsonaro had first mentioned a potential privatization of Petrobras earlier this month, indicating that he was frustrated for being blamed for fuel price increases in the country.
Petrobras announced on Monday it will raise diesel and gasoline prices at the refinery gate starting on Tuesday, following a recent spike in oil prices and a sharp depreciation of Brazil's currency.
The company has become a hot political topic as energy costs have driven Brazil's annual inflation into double digits, hurting Bolsonaro's popularity ahead of next year's election.
As MRC informed before, Petrobras said earlier this month it had halted talks with Brazilian conglomerate Ultrapar on the sale of the state-run oil company's Refap refinery, part of its program to sell eight plants. The company said it would relaunch the process of selling Refap in the future but did not provide a date.
We remind that in August 2021, Petrobras hired JPMorgan Chase & Co as an advisor to sell its stake in the petrochemical company Braskem SA.
We also remind that Braskem is no longer pursuing a petrochemical project, which would have included an ethane cracker, in West Virginia. And the company is seeking to sell the land that would have housed the cracker. The project, announced in 2013, had been on Braskem's back burner for several years.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
MRC