Over time, an almost one-to-one correspondence has prevailed between the performance of the Brazilian Naval Industry and Petrobras' Policy, as its behavior towards the industry has reflected governmental guidelines at each time.
Thus, from the Juscelino Kubitschek government to the Dilma Roussef government, the second Shipbuilding Plan and the relevant role of Petrobras and Vale with the ordering of large ships, promoting and inducing investments by shipyards for a larger scale of capacity building, including Brazil in the concert of the great shipbuilding nations.
This impact on the Brazilian Naval Industry is only paralleled after 2003, in the Lula government with Petrobras, returning to the contracting of ships in Brazil, in line with PROMEF - Transpetro's Fleet Modernization and Expansion Program and with PROMINP - Mobilization of the National Oil and Natural Gas Industry with an emphasis on local content, under the tutelage of Dilma Roussef, then Minister of Mines and Energy, who now, as president, launches the broader Brasil Maior Plan, and inserts Naval Construction with greater participation in the context of the exploration, production and transport of oil and gas in our continental basin.
The Petrobras Program is thus, in part, reversing the result of neglect, bordering on the genocide of the Brazilian Merchant Navy in recent years, which culminated in the sale of national shipping companies, such as Aliança and Libra to foreign shipowners and in the chartering of ships from Transroll and the Frota Oceânica e Amazônica, for the company Aliança, merged into Hamburg Sud.
With the exception of Norsul and Vale with Log In, both in cabotage, private shipowners opted for the construction of ships to charter to Petrobras, an alternative that has stimulated the formation of new shipping companies with national and foreign capital, contracting vessels, mainly, offshore, operating or chartering to Petrobras.
This market niche, however, was still opposed in the Lula government with the neglect of maritime transport logistics with the bankruptcy of Loide Brasileiro, the sale of Aliança, Libra, and the withdrawal of navigation operations such as Lachman and the charter to foreign shipowners. of ships from the Frota\Oceânica and Transroll, paradoxically with the launch of the slogan Navega Brasil which constitutes the shovel of the resistance of the national shipowners.
In addition to the economic plans Funaro, Bresser, Verão and Brasil Novo, despite the intentions, they were the accelerators of industrial withering, in which shipbuilding is inserted. The Real Plan, in the Itamar government, constitutes the resumption of the path for the recovery of the naval construction in the long term of maturation, but, paradoxically, launched in the Dilma government, the Plano
Brasil Maior does not rescue our private merchant marine, but provides a substantial order for ships and drilling rigs, FPSOs and platform support vessels for full occupancy of the shipyards in operation and under implementation.
At the same time, the prevailing conditions created by the Government Policy and followed by Petrobras, have attracted the attention and interest of national and foreign businessmen to the more attractive offshore oil and gas market, given the recession that current economic conditions impose on the world. , reducing investment opportunities.
However, the fruits of this Petrobras Policy, giving rise to the recovery and consolidation of our Naval Industry and its Production Chain, will not be harvested to the extent that we aim, if we do not pay attention to professional management at the level of the enterprise and if we do not overcome the great challenge of rescuing professional technical education, which has been regressing since Getúlio Vargas, despite SENAI's efforts in its field.
Full-time technical schools, with education in the required breadth and depth and in the main function of competent technical-professional training, must multiply in proportion to the industrial growth that is desired for the country, under penalty of making technological dependence chronic.
Petrobras is starting a new era for the Brazilian Naval Industry and its Production Chain, which are responsible for
counterpart with innovation and reliability for the exercise of knowledge and competitiveness, ensuring the content
intellectual, technological and material resources, which the Petrobras Program provides.
Nobuo Oguri was born in Tokyo, but came to Brazil at the age of two and has lived here for over eight decades. He trained generations of engineers at UFRJ and was an executive at shipyards such as Ishibrás, Grupo IVI and Eisa. Today he is considered one of the most respected naval engineers in Brazil.