São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce signed last Wednesday (19) in Rio de Janeiro an agreement on technical cooperation with the Energy Research Office (EPE, acronym in Portuguese). EPE is a federal public institution attached to the Ministry of Mines and Energy that works on studies and research. On the occasion, EPE also launched the “Oil & Gas Industry Report – Special Study: Saudi Arabia.”
The agreement is a result of the approximation between both institutions, which are complementary. “One attribution of EPE is doing everything related to forecasting the price of oil and derivatives, so, in our supply team, we have a group that stays current to the oil geopolitics. And of course, the Arab world is extremely relevant. For us, a better understanding of the Arab world is vitally important,” Oil, Gas & Biofuels Studies director José Mauro Ferreira Coelho explained in an interview with ANBA.
With the agreement, both organizations plans on connecting opportunities in the energy industry to potential investors and businesspeople. “EPE works with all types of energy in Brazil and knows every energy industry in an integrated manner and obviously every investment opportunity we have in Brazil. Of course, establishing a partnership with chambers of commerce, and the Arabs, is very important to present these opportunities in the Brazilian energy industry,” Coelho pointed out.
Arab Chamber Marketing and Strategy director Janine Bezerra de Menezes (pictured above) believes the agreement comes to bring together the synergies between the Arab Chamber and EPE. “They have this great knowledge on the opportunities of the industry in Brazil. Therefore, they’ll bring key opportunities in the sector that are important not only for Brazil but the world as well. And we’ll work on this agenda to provide effective results on this,” Menezes said.
The institutions have scheduled a meeting in the next month to follow up the partnership. One idea is establishing work groups that share knowledge on the Arab world oil sector and Brazilian energy sector. “After this agreement, our second step will be establishing a work plan for 2020,” Coelho finished.
Saudi Arabia
The report features sections on the Brazilian scenario, the world scenario, statistics, as well as a special section that each edition addresses the outlook of a certain country or region outlook. “This half of the year, we chose to address Saudi Arabia. We had long wanted to make a study on that country. We had an additional difficulty that was selecting what would go into the report because in the case of Saudi Arabia we had a very larger wealth to work on,” said EPE assistant superintendent Marcelo Cavalcanti, responsible for the report.
The document focus in the second half of 2019. “What I find interesting is that the contents are accessible for the reader. It’s for every businessman that still doesn’t get the impact that the energy sector can have on its product. It’s a very rich material and brings questions. It’s a material made not only to specialists but everyone,” Arab Chamber Institutional Relations manager Fernanda Baltazar said.
The report is available on the EPE website. To access it, click here (website in Portuguese) or contact the office team via boletimpetroleo@epe.gov.br to receive its half-yearly reports.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
