Privatization of Brazil's petroleum sector on track despite scandal

This paper reports that the push to privatize Brazil's petroleum sector remains on track despite the taint of scandal that hit state oil company Petroleos Brasileiro SA and the ensuing political crisis for the administration of President Fernando Collor de Mello. Collor's efforts to reform Brazil's beleaguered economy have focused heavily on privatizing state-owned companies by selling assets or ending monopolies. Nowhere is that task more daunting than with Petrobras, one of the world's biggest petroleum companies, which has an entrenched monopoly over most upstream and downstream operations in the country. Collor and the energy ministers and chiefs of Petrobras during his administration have pressed measured to inject free market principles in Brazil's petroleum sector. The Collor administration earlier this year sent a bill to Brazil's Congress calling for a constitutional amendment to end Petrobras monopoly over exploration, production, transportation, refining, and exports and imports of oil and gas. The amendment is expected to be voted upon in 1993