Brazil Regulator Urges Refinery Building to Avert Fuel Shortages

Brazil Regulator Urges Refinery Building to Avert Fuel Shortages
Sabrina Valle /Bloomberg
April 13, 2016

Fuel imports could triple to 1 million barrels a day in 2030
Country needs more pipelines and storage, oil regulator says

Brazil needs to add refineries or storage facilities for imported fuel to avert shortages in the coming years, the head of the country’s oil regulator said.
Without new refineries, the country could see fuel imports triple to more than 1 million barrels a day in 2030, Magda Chambriard, president of the petroleum agency known as ANP, said Wednesday at an event in Rio de Janeiro.
“Investments would need to start in 2017 to be ready in ten years,” Chambriard said. “There will be shortage, and this shortage will need to be met with imports.”
Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the state-controlled company embroiled in a corruption scandal and buried under the largest debt load in the oil industry, has canceled, reduced or postponed four refinery projects in the past couple of years. Petrobras, as the Rio-based company is known, has a near monopoly on fuel distribution in Brazil.
The country already faces bottlenecks in logistics and would need new ports, pipelines and storage facilities to absorb the anticipated growth in imports, Chambriard said.