Brazilian Oil Company Chairman Visits Saudi Arabia

Excerpt from report in English by Brazil-Arab news agency (ANBA) website on 18 November

Sao Paulo: The president of Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, Sergio Gabrielli, is going to visit Saudi Arabia this weekend at the invitation of the president of the Saudi oil company, Abdallah Jum’ah, who visited Brazil in April. The trip is going to coincide with the mission that the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty) is going to promote, starting on Saturday [19 November], to Dubai and Riyadh, which will culminate with the return to free trade negotiations between the Mercosur and the Gulf Cooperation Council Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Brazilian oil giant Petrobras is interested in establishing partnerships with Saudi Arabian state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, the largest in the world. With the objective of closely observing the Arab company’s operations, the president of the Brazilian company, Sergio Gabrielli, is going to visit Saudi Arabia between the 19th and 21st of this month. “The expansion of cooperation in the technical and technological and personnel training fields and business opportunities between both companies is expected,” according to a statement published by the Petrobras press department.

The trip is the result of an invitation by the president of Saudi Aramco, Abdallah Jum’ah, while he was in Brazil at the end of April to participate in the 3rd Forum of National Oil Companies, which took place in the city of Rio de Janeiro. At the occasion, the executive visited the Petrobras installations and was impressed with what he saw. In an interview to ANBA at the time, he declared there are areas of common interest between both companies where there may be cooperation.

To Petrobras, the development of possible partnerships with Saudi Aramco may be in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, “or in any other country of common strategic interest,” as both companies operate on the foreign market.

The Brazilian state-owned oil company recently turned its eyes to the Arab world again, after a lapse of 25 years following the end of company operations in Iraq. “The Middle Eastern and African region, previously included in the Petrobras international portfolio, is being revisited and evaluated, focusing on a possible future consolidation of a new focus area,” according to a company statement. [Passage omitted.]