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OTHER INTERVIEWS: |
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Interview of the week Fernando Siqueira |
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Fernando
Siqueira, director of AEPET (Petrobrás Engineers Association) When did the government give such order? About the beginning of the eighties. And why? First because the so called “Seven Sisters”have a strong power and do not want competitors in their business. |
Edição nº 9 - Primeira quinzena de dezembro de 2003. |
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So, they have no interest that neither Brazil nor any other country develop alternative energy, specially bio-energy (that includes the planting of energy producing vegetables). But, besides that, Brazil receives plenty solar energy. As to the wind based energy, Brazil potential is about 142 GW of useful energy, that is equivalent to 10 Itaipu mills. And all that with our incipient technology ! The fact is we have a huge energy development potential and I am working hard near Petrobrás directors for that. Besides, alternative energy is apparently expensive because nothing is invested to improve it. Ten billions are invested to develop oil resources and zero to alternative energy, to improve the quality of its equipments, etc. .So, if 10% of the amount invested in the oil issue were applied in the alternative energy research, the result is that in ten years it would be less expensive and much more profitable. Then, alternative energy is, strategically, one of the most important issues of the country.It worries very much to know Monsanto, one of the biggest world enterprises of genetically modified food, is quite determined to win the energy market in Brazil and all around the Third World. The question of planting genetically modified soya and rasing all this discussion about food is a background to have the soya as an energy and a biogas generative and under its control. We have suggested the union of Petrobrás with Eletrobrás and the consequent foundation of a large energy enterprise, having a national state characterization. Like today, there were forces against the foundation of Petrobrás, but at that time the government was determined to take Petrobrás on. Nowadays, is the government concerned about technological development in the country? Are José Eduardo Dutra and Dilma Youssef (Mines and Energy Minister ) worried? I do not see that much, unfortunately, I expected more. For example, Petrobrás suspected some areas might be possible oil producers and those areas are being sold by ANP ( Oil National Agency ) at a very low price to foreign enterprises. We talked to the minister trying to cancel the fifth sale, she said she would try, but she failed. So we thought she would do something to stop the sixth, but she went to the media to say she had to do the sixth, the seventh, the eighth and sell pretty noble areas to incentivate foreign enterprises to come to our country. It was a very worrying change of posture, in less than one year. And how do you analyse the relationship between the media and the Petrobrás? The brazilian media ( almost 100% ) is mainly supported by the advertisers, that are mostly multinational enterprises. Those communication vehicles do a real job in favour of these companies. We had, specially from 1993 to 1995, when the oil monopoly was broken, a big campaign in mass media against Petrobrás, against state companies. Their employees were insulted and a pejorative label was created to put public opinion against state companies and for their privatization. In 1995, Veja magazine published a ten pages report totally against Petrobrás. The magazine interviewd not only directors but also me to a report supposedly for Petrobrás. Instead, those ten pages hit firmly Petrobrás telling terrible lies.The ones who knew the facts realised how tendentious the report was. The Veja magazine is defined as the first north-american magazine written in portuguese. So, it published such report full of lies and we contested it under the legal right to answer; Petrobrás also wrote ten pages contesting each point, and we sent it to Veja ; however, it was not published. Then, Petrobrás changed the whole answer into an advertisement, in four pages, and yet Veja did not publish it, under the argument that it could not be demoralised in front of its readers. So, we had to sew them and the process has not come to an end. There was also the case of the newspaper Estado de São Paulo. A north-american expert, who had written a book of one thousand pages about oil, came to Rio de Janeiro where he gave some interviews. José Casado, a journalist of that newspaper, wrote a report that was published at that time saying that the expert stated Petrobrás produced only 30 barrels per employee while the world production was 60 barrels per employee, ie, Petrobrás was inefficient. It was a very poor argument which an oil expert would never use. Then, we sent him the report and he wrote a letter to the newspaper demanding his name was taken off such report or he would sew them. But such letter was not published, we know it because we contacted him. And there were many other cases. Paulo Francis, for instance, who had been a nationalist but suddenly began to receive 20 thousand dollars for his work in the USA programme “Manhattan Connection”. He made several reports to “Globo”attacking Petrobrás employees and we sewed him; after the third report the judge did not know who was right. At that point, a fourth report incited brazilian people to buy Uzi machine-guns to shoot all Petrobrás employees. So the judge, under the circumstances of that fourth evidence, gave us gain of cause in first instance. In second instance, however, Roberto Marinho used all the Globo power and managed to substitute the judge; the next judge did not consider us the right people for such demand. So, Paulo Francis, stronger, told the Manhattan Connection Petrobrás directors were all of them thieves and the president of Petrobrás sewed him in the USA. As the north-american justice is a bit serious than ours, he had to pay a huge indemnity. But the fact is there has been an orchestration in media in order to put public opinion against the state enterprises. And that leads to the weird and absurd situation in which the foreigners only come to our country to do good things since we are an incompetent people. And suddenly you see cases like Enron, WorldCom and recently Parmalat.
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