The distribution of natural gas is a concession of the Brazilian states, according to the Federal Constitution of 1988. Of all the market segments in the sector, this is the most privatized given the share capital of each distributor. The proposed sale of Gaspetro, a company controlled by Petrobras, would hand over the sector almost entirely to private capital, under the pretext of lowering natural gas tariffs to the end user. Encouraged by the first industrialization cycle, promoted with the substitution of imports (RANGEL, 1987), monopolies and oligopolies emerged early in the Brazilian economy, by law or determined by the technical-economic imperative. Normally, they are activities organized as a public utility service, imposed by economic development and within a specific legal framework (RANGEL, 1986). With a highly qualified technical staff and technologies that are a reference for the reality of the energy sectors in the globalized world - reality evidenced in the discovery and exploration of the Pre-Salt - Petrobras has its historical mistakes. The main one, perhaps, was the adoption of an eminently business model, with a focus linked to its results and profit margins and not to the development of the country's energy planning and the competitiveness of the productive sector. The proposal is considered to have a high degree of irrationality when it encourages the privatization of a mostly private sector. At the same time, it does not guarantee more competitive prices to end users of the product and does not change the regulation of the service, which must be associated with local needs. It also ignores economic cycles, external or internal, and, logically, distances itself from the need to respond to the seesaw periods of capitalism, in addition to ending the original purpose of the company that went through fundamental questions of national sovereignty through the search for independence energetic.
Mots clés : natural gas|Petrobras|privatization|Ignacio Rangel|Brazil
A105096LE