The super El Niño and Petrobras' super profit

In Brazil, the warning is the same. INMET and INPE project an El Niño that could reach the “very strong” category and has an almost 100% chance of remaining active until the beginning of 2027. In the Amazon, rivers are already beginning to recede, which could impede river transport and isolate riverside communities. The Northeast faces prolonged drought. The risk of fires increases from the North to the Central-West. Rio Grande do Sul is once again experiencing storms and flooding. These are the same regions that never fully recovered from the El Niño of 2023 and 2024. It was in this scenario of extreme weather events around the world that Petrobras, like other oil companies, reported an exceptional profit quarter.

The results for April to June came out this Thursday (06/08): Petrobras had R$52.4 billion in net profit, 96.8% more than in the same period in 2025. What explains the number is the record pre-salt production added to the soaring price of oil, driven by the war in the Middle East. A Brent barrel went from an average of US$67.82 in the second quarter of last year to US$104.52 this year, an increase of 54%. The company broke a record in its own oil production in Brazil, which reached 2.7 million barrels per day, and also in the use of refineries. It is also worth highlighting the growth in exports, which reached almost one million barrels per day in the quarter. In other words, the increase in production has no relation to the country's energy security. It is, in fact, one of the drivers of this unusual profit.

Petrobras is not alone. According to analysis by The Guardian, the eight largest oil companies in the world made almost US$93 billion in profit between April and June. It is almost double the US$50 billion from the same period last year, equivalent to almost R$60 thousand in profit per second. Chevron increased its results fivefold and reached US$12.2 billion. ExxonMobil doubled its, with $14.5 billion. The same crisis that makes electricity bills, food and the cost of rebuilding a flooded city more expensive is the one that supports these balance sheets and fattens shareholders' bank accounts. This quarter alone, Petrobras approved R$17.4 billion in dividends and interest on equity, distributed to public and private shareholders. Dividends that almost the entire population of the country will never see.

In investments, the first half totaled US$10.4 billion. Of this total, 84.6% went to the Exploration and Production segment. The Gas and Low Carbon Energy area received just US$203 million, equivalent to 1.95% of the total, a negligible amount. And most of that little went to fossil gas, which is far from being a clean source, and not to renewables in fact.

Petrobras is the largest company in the country, with scale, engineering and cash that no other has. This is precisely why betting everything on a declining asset is the biggest risk it can take. The study “The Petrobras we need”, launched by the Climate Observatory in September 2025, shows that there is a financially viable path. It starts with the most urgent: defining exclusion zones in environmentally sensitive areas and abandoning new developments in the Equatorial Margin and the Pelotas Basin. It involves expanding investment in biofuels, with environmental control and socio-environmental safeguards guaranteed in each project. It also includes deactivating fields that have already reached their expected useful life, assuming the cost of this liability instead of outsourcing it to smaller companies, without the structure to handle it.

Instead of opening new exploration frontiers, Petrobras can calculate how much oil the country will actually need in the coming years and supply this demand with the areas it already explores. Production would gradually decrease, concentrated in sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, and opening space for gains from production chains and low-carbon technologies. It's not about turning off the key from one moment to the next. It's about stopping betting the future of the country's largest company on an asset that tends to decline after reaching its peak in the next two decades, with the advancement of electrification and new technologies.

Urgency is not abstract. The same drought that lowers the rivers of the Amazon empties the reservoirs of hydroelectric plants, turns on gas thermal plants and pushes the tariff flag up on everyone's electricity bills. It is important to understand that the record production does not stay in the country: around a third of everything the company extracted was exported. The crisis that Petrobras helps to fuel comes back as a cost for those who have never seen a cent of the company's profits.

The next decision already has a date. On October 7, the ANP will offer 22 sectors of exploration blocks and 2 sectors of marginal accumulations in the 6th Cycle of the Permanent Concession Offer, in addition to 13 blocks in the 4th Cycle of the Permanent Sharing Offer. The company has just announced that it has the cash to follow another path. But the decision is not just the board's: the Union is the controlling shareholder of Petrobras. About two months left. Until then, whoever wants to govern the country has to answer a simple question. Will you look to the past and use Brazil's largest company to bet on a declining asset, or assume that the climate crisis matters and there is a need to seek an end to its dependence?