Queiroz Galvão’s shipping company can now sign new contracts with Petrobras again

Queiroz Galvão Óleo e Gás (QGOG) has been allowed to sign contracts with Petrobras once again. At the end of January, the company was excluded from the list of firms prevented from being contracted, even though the Comptroller General’s Office was still pursuing legal proceedings against Construtora Queiroz Galvão, implicated directly in the crimes investigated by the federal Carwash anti-corruption operation.

The company entered the restricted list in 2014, when the Federal Police identified that the group’s construction subsidiary had participated in an industry cartel to divide up Petrobras projects among themselves through the payment of kickbacks to executives and political parties.

QGOG ended 2015 as the shipbuilding company with the most drill rigs rendering services to Petrobras, with nine units contracted, according to a report published late last year by BofA Merrill Lynch. The second largest is Odebrecht Óleo e Gás (OOG), with six rigs, which is still barred.

Due to the prohibition, the two shipbuilders have not gone through the early stages of renegotiation of supplier rates being pushed by Petrobras. QGOG’s rates were on the order of US$ 380,000/day on average per contract. If preserved, they would tend to be more expensive than the new contracts that have been renegotiated, in which Petrobras has achieved discounts averaging about 15%.

Asked to comment, QGOG said that Petrobras had set aside the administrative proceedings opened against the company and that the suspension of the decision follows a similar decision adopted by the Comptroller General’s Office in November 2015.