Institutional
Pre-Sal Petróleo is a federal public company under the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME).
It was established on August 1st, 2013 by Decree No. 8,063/2013, in the form of a privately-held stock corporation with start-up capital of fifty million reais (BRL 50,000,000.00). Pré-Sal Petróleo's share capital is composed by Union-owned nominative shares.
The same Decree No. 8,063/2013 enacted Pré-Sal Petróleo's bylaws.
Law No. 12,304/2010 provides its purpose and establishes its powers and attributions, according to which Pré-Sal Petróleo is intended to manage the production sharing contracts executed by the MME and the management of Union's oil and natural gas trading contracts.
Under the terms of the Law, it is further intended to:
- perform the necessary acts for the management of production sharing contracts, representing the Union in the consortium of firms formed for the execution of such contracts and participating, on behalf of the Union, in the consortium's operational committees.
- monitor and audit the execution of exploration, evaluation, development and production of oil and natural gas projects in the Production Sharing regime.
- monitor and audit the costs related to the production sharing contracts.
- conclude, on behalf of the Union, the trading contracts of the Union's oil and natural gas with trading agents, which must comply with the national hydrocarbons trading policy.
- represent the Union in the procedures of production unitization and in the agreements resulting therefrom, when the deposits in the pre-salt area and in the strategic areas spread over non-contracted areas.
Pré-Sal Petróleo is a public non-dependent company, that is, it does not conform to the definition of dependent company conferred by item III of Article 2 of the Supplementary Law 101/2000: "State dependent company: controlled company that receives from the controlling entity financial resources for payment of personnel expenses or general or capital expenses, excluded, in the latter case, those from increase of equity participation”.
In this respect, Article 7 of Law No. 12,304/2010 lists Pré-Sal Petróleo´s sources of resources, among which: (i) income from the management of the production sharing contracts, including a portion of the subscription bonus for such Contracts; (ii) income from the management of contracts executed with the Union's oil and natural gas trading agents; and (iii) income from other sources.
Pré-Sal Petróleo's attributions and legal personality shall not be regarded as the same as those of other Brazilian state entities.