Petrobras critic to head Brazil’s state-run oil firm

Bloomberg

President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has selected a senator and former Petrobras official to lead Brazil’s state-controlled oil giant with the aim of turning it into a renewable energy powerhouse.
Jean Paul Prates, a senator for Lula’s Workers’ Party, confirmed Lula’s invitation in a note sent from his press office. Moments later, Lula congratulated Prates on Twitter, emphasising that he’s an “expert in the energy sector.”
He will take over a company that’s been criticised for showering investors with record dividends while failing to invest enough in oil refining, wind and solar. Prates has said Petrobras’s current management is steering the company “off a cliff” by narrowly focusing on oil and gas and neglecting the energy transition.
Prates is viewed as a moderate member of the left-wing Workers’ Party, and his career in the senate will help him manage an oil company that regularly comes under political pressure to contain fuel prices and create jobs.
In recent years Petrobras has won praise from investors for focusing on its most profitable oil projects in deepwater of the South Atlantic, while selling off lower-margin assets such as pipelines, refineries and mature oil fields on land.