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Petrobras

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Last edited by lenazun on November 25, 2009 - 1:18pm Oil & gas Globalization

Company Snapshot:

Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., is a semi-public Brazilian oil company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. The company was founded in 1953 and is a former Brazilian oil monopoly. Its output is more than 2 million Barrels of oil equivalent per day. The company owned the largest floating oil platform in the world, called the "P36", until it sunk in 2001, after several explosions killed eleven workers. The estimated loss was $350 Million in USD to the company.

Number of employees worldwide: 62,266

Chief executive officer: José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo

Website: http://www.petrobras.com.br/

Global Fortune 500 rank: 34

Total revenue: $72,347.0 Million

Corporate accountability

Labor:

Accidents

In August, 1984 36 workers drowned and 17 were injured in an explosion and fire on a Petrobras oil-drilling platform in the Campos Basin off Brazil.

In November, 1995 one person died and five were wounded in a Petrobras pipeline fire in Sao Paulo.

In December, 1998 a fire at Petrobras's Gabriel Passos Refinery in Minas Gerais killed three workers.

In January, 2001 two workers died from a fire on a Petrobras offshore natural gas platform in Campos Basin.

In March, 2001 11 people were killed after explosions rocked the world's biggest offshore oil platform. Days later, the platform sank.

Environment and product safety:

In 2000, a broken Petrobras pipeline resulted in the biggest oil spill in 25 years -- four million liters (1 million gallons), spilled in the Iguacu River. The government fined the company $100 million -- less than two days revenues.

Just months before, a ruptured pipeline at a Petrobras refinery in Rio de Janeiro's scenic Guanabara Bay resulted in a 350,000 gallon (1.3 million litre) oil spill into the bay, killing hundreds of fish, birds and plants.

Six months after the Iguacu River spill, a Petrobras refinery near Curitiba in the southern state of Parana resulted in another oil leak, the company's sixth environmental accident in 2000.

On March 15, 2001, Petrobras' biggest offshore platform, P-36, suffered two major explosions and sank ten days later. The incident resulted in 11 deaths.

(For a chronology of Petrobras accidents from 1984 to 2001 go here)

In 2004, Petrobras reported finding an oil leak on the sea floor in Marlin Sul.

Petrobras has invested heavily in the development of biofuels. Biodiesel is available at more than 500 Petrobras stations in Brazil.

In 2006, after losing a court dispute it had initiated, Petrobras announced it would abandon plans to build a road into an environmentally sensitive region of the Amazon -- Yasuni National Park. The company had already built a road through a buffer zone right up to the edge of the park and the company asserted that it has not given up on oil development within the park, saying it will employ helicopters to access the site.

"Allowing Petrobras to drill in Yasuni would be a gross violation of the rights of the Huaorani and Taromenane peoples," asserts Brian Keane of Land is Life, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based indigenous rights group.

Political influence (national and international):

55.7% of Petrobras' common shares (with vote right) is owned by the Brazilian government.