By Paulo Trevisani
BRASÍLIA--Brazilian senators decided Tuesday to open an
investigation into allegations that managers of Brazil's energy
giant Petróleo Brasileiro SA overpaid for a Texas refinery in
2006.
Such a probe, for which a new poll shows wide public support,
comes ahead of general elections in October. President Dilma
Rousseff's was chairwoman of Petrobras, as the
government-controlled, publicly traded company is known, at the
time of the deal and personally approved it. Members of her
Worker's Party, or PT, headed the energy company's management at
the time.
Current and former officials of Petrobras are being accused by
opposition lawmakers of having made a flawed decision to buy the
oil refinery in Pasadena, Texas, in 2006. Questions about the deal
were first raised in the local press a couple of years ago, and
have gained prominence more recently as opposition leaders use the
case to pick at Ms. Rousseff's popularity.
Government representatives and a Petrobras spokeswoman declined
to comment, but the company has denied wrongdoing and has said it
is conducting an internal investigation.
The president's political allies, who make up a majority in
congress, have fought the opposition's move to install a
parliamentary commission to investigate the issue. But late Tuesday
afternoon, Speaker of the Senate Renan Calheiros, whose party,
PMDB, is central to the governing coalition, said an investigation
will begin in the upper house next week.
Mr. Calheiros didn't have many options after the Supreme Court
last week ruled that the minority had the right to request the
scrutiny. The opposition is now trying to expand the investigation
to include the lower house.
Earlier Tuesday, an opinion poll released by the National
Confederation of Transportation, or CNT, and research firm MDA,
showed that 30.3% of respondents said they are following the
Pasadena case in the news, and of these 91.4% said they wanted
Petrobras to be investigated.
Current and former officials at the company have said the deal
seemed good at the time, but became less appealing as global
oil-market conditions changed in the following years. The deal
began with Petrobras agreeing to pay $359 million for 50% of the
refinery owned by Belgian commodities trader Transcor Astra
Group--which had bought it for $42.5 million a year earlier.
Ms. Rousseff has said she wasn't informed that a put option in
the original contract would later force Petrobras to buy the
refinery's other half, catapulting the deal's final price to $1.25
billion.
Petrobras Chief Executive Maria das Graças Foster, recently told
a senate committee that the deal is being written off the company's
books, a sign that "it wasn't a good deal" in retrospect.
The controversy surrounding Petrobras comes as Brazil is kicking
off a presidential campaign. Ms. Rousseff is seen as the likely
winner but her approval rate is declining. It was at 47.9% in the
same CNT/MDA poll released Tuesday, down from 55% in February.
The senate investigation into Petrobras could drag on for months
and into Ms. Rousseff's re-election campaign.
Her main opponents are already saying that the Pasadena deal
shows that Ms. Rousseff is a weak manager, a politically sensitive
claim since her managerial skills have been one of the PT's
strongest selling points.
The CNT/MDA poll showed that 44.8% of respondents consider Ms.
Rousseff to be a "regular" manager, while 30.6% said she isn't a
good manager and 22.3% said she is a good manager.
Moreover, 80.5% of respondents who said they are following the
Pasadena-related news said they believe there were "irregularities"
in the deal, and 66.5% said that Ms. Rousseff is responsible and
should have informed herself better before approving the
acquisition.
The poll didn't connect voters' reaction to the Pasadena deal
directly to Ms. Rousseff's approval rates or her chances of winning
a second term this year.
Although Ms. Rousseff still appears as the likely winner in
October, her lead has diminished. She is expected to get 37% of the
vote, compared with 43.7% in February. Her top opponent, Senator
Aécio Neves, from the social-democratic party PSDB, would get
21.6%, up from 17% in February. Mr. Neves has been leading the
opposition's attempt to open an investigation commission for
Petrobras.
The poll released Tuesday interviewed 2,002 people between April
20 and 25. It has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.
Brazil's stock market and Petrobras' shares began to rally after
the poll results were out at 9:30 a.m. ET.
Analysts have said that any news indicating a potential change
in the government could mean less intervention in state-controlled
companies such as Petrobras, which has a big weight in the local
stock market.
"We were surprised to hear a large number of investors and
political analysts claim, with some conviction, that they believe
that President Rousseff will lose her bid for re-election,"
Nomura's New-York-based economist Tony Volpon wrote in a note to
clients released before the CNT/MDA poll. He said he was recently
in Brazil and is "more sanguine" than the markets about Ms.
Rousseff's re-election.
The Ibovespa stock index was up 0.76% minutes ahead of the
poll's release and was up 1.55% half an hour later. It closed up
0.89%, at 51838 points. Petrobras was trading at 16.60 Brazilian
reais ($7.45) a share before the poll, and at 17.07 reais after it,
closing at 16.69 reais, up 0.79%.
Write to Paulo Trevisani at paulo.trevisani@wsj.com
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