The director-general of the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), Rodolfo Saboia, believes that "there is no magic" to cheapen fuels, in times of high oil prices.

For two months at the helm of the regulator, the reserve admiral is already facing a national debate on the prices of oil products, ignited by the decision of the President of the Republic to intervene in the change in command of Petrobras and by the threats of a new strike by truck drivers . One of his management priorities, according to him, will be to ensure that the opening of the refining will bring benefits to the consumer in the future.

"This question is the million dollar question (about how to reach a cheaper price for fuels in the country)," said the director general of the ANP, in an interview with Valor. "There is no magic for this, since oil is a commodity. It will go up, it will go down, it was like that for a lifetime and there is no way of failing to impact fuel costs in some way. [final] price is another issue, which involves political issues, "said Savoie, referring to discussions in the government about exemption from derivatives.

The admiral said that everything that goes beyond market prices is, in the end, "a political issue". Regarding the studies on an equalization fund to mitigate price volatility and the government's decision to zero the PIS / Cofins for two months, while discussing a definitive way to exempt diesel from taxes, Saboia says that it is not up to the ANP to define public policy. "There will be no involvement of the ANP, except to technically subsidize [the debate]", commented the admiral, former Environment Superintendent of the Directorate of Ports and Coasts of the Navy.

Saboia says that he naturally deals with the change in command of Petrobras. The changes in the management of the oil company and the negative impact of the market around the interference of Jair Bolsonaro in the state-owned company, according to him, do not change expectations about the opening of the refining. "What is up to the ANP is to observe the scenario. The replacement of a CEO [president of a company] for the ANP is a market issue and works as such, of course. For the ANP, this has not changed at all. We continue to work with the same premises that we worked on before ", he commented.

Amid threats of a new strike by truck drivers, Petrobras has been accused in recent months, by importers and distributors, of practicing prices that are out of line with the international market. Savoyard, however, disagrees with the assessment. "What the ANP does is to check whether movement is detached from reality, upwards or downwards, to see if eventually the referral to the competent bodies is appropriate. And, at the moment, we do not see this situation. We did not see anything unusual".

The director-general also saw no basis in another recent complaint against the state-owned company, filed by the National Federation of Fuel Distributors (Brasilcom) in February, in which the entity warned of risks of shortages and reported cases in which the oil company was unable to meet the demand. demand from distributors for extra cargo, in addition to contractual commitments. "What Petrobras said it was unable to meet accounted for 2% of demand, which came well above the historical average ... Our assessment, at the moment, is that there is no risk of shortages," he said.

Among the ANP's priorities, Saboia cites the regulation of the opening of natural gas and refining. "This will require monitoring, so that, in a scenario in which the refineries were not built to compete with each other, we will have this competition ... It is very important for the agency to look at this transformation, so that [ be achieved] the final purpose, which is the benefit for the consumer, a dynamic of free market ", he commented.

One of the points included in the agenda, to deal with the opening of the refining, is the issue of real-time inventory monitoring. "We had only one actor [in the market] and when we had a supply problem, it was basically controlled by Petrobras ... We will need a different monitoring".

In Saboia's assessment, the ANP tends to gain a greater role in the resolution of conflicts between agents in the coming years. And he cites as an example the case involving the dispute between small producers and Petrobras over access to the natural gas processing unit (UPGN) in Guamaré (RN). "We hope that this case will multiply in this transition process," he said.

In the field of biofuels, Saboia mentions that the challenge lies in building a new biodiesel contracting model and ending the product auctions in 2022.

The director of the ANP also bets on the resumption of auctions for oil and gas blocks for 2021. "What is expected is that, with the advance of vaccination in the world, there will be a gradual recovery of the economy and this will benefit oil."