Petrobras
Brazilian majority state-owned oil and gas corporation
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Key Takeaways
- Petróleo Brasileiro S.
- The company's name translates to Brazilian Petroleum Corporation .
- In the 2023 Forbes Global 2000, Petrobras was ranked as the 58th-largest public company in the world.
- It was given a legal monopoly in Brazil.
- In 1961, the company's REDUC refinery began operations near Rio de Janeiro, and in 1963, its Cenpes research center opened in Rio de Janeiro; it remains one of the world's largest centers dedicated to energy research.
Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., better known by and trading as the portmanteau Petrobras (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˌpɛtɾoˈbɾas, pet-]), is a Brazilian majority state-owned multinational corporation in the petroleum industry, which is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. The company's name translates to Brazilian Petroleum Corporation.
The company was ranked #71 in the 2023 Fortune Global 500 list. In the 2023 Forbes Global 2000, Petrobras was ranked as the 58th-largest public company in the world.
History
Petrobras was created in 1953 under the government of Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas with the slogan "The Oil is Ours" (Portuguese: "O petróleo é nosso"). It was given a legal monopoly in Brazil. In 1953, Brazil produced only 2,700 barrels of oil per day. In 1961, the company's REDUC refinery began operations near Rio de Janeiro, and in 1963, its Cenpes research center opened in Rio de Janeiro; it remains one of the world's largest centers dedicated to energy research. In 1968, the company established Petrobras Quimica S.A ("Petroquisa"), a subsidiary focused on petrochemicals and the conversion of naphtha into ethene.
Petrobras had begun processing oil shale in 1953, developing the Petrosix technology for extracting oil from oil shale. It began using an industrial-size retort to process shale in the 1990s. In 2006, Petrobras said that their industrial retort could process 260 tonnes/hour of oil shale.
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