Brazilian regulator approves Petrobras’s sale of REMAN refinery

The Brazilian government has approved Petróleo Brasileiro SA’s (Petrobras) previously proposed sale of its 46,000-b/d Isaac Sabbá refinery (REMAN)—including a storage terminal—in Manaus, Amazonas, to Atem's Distribuidora de Petróleo SA (Atem) subsidiary Ream Participações SA (OGJ Online, Aug. 26, 2021).

Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) granted its approval for the planned sale of assets on May 13 in line with a June 2019 agreement between Petrobras and CADE governing the operator’s ongoing program to divest most of its Brazilian refining and related logistics assets, as well as the opening of Brazil’s refining sector to increased competitiveness and transparency, Petrobras said in a release.

CADE’s final and unappealable approval of transaction, however, remains subject to a 15-day waiting period required by law, as well as other customary and precedent closing conditions as outlined in a sales and purchase agreement with Atem signed in August 2021, before the parties can finalize it, according to Petrobras.

Approval of the deal follows Petrobras’s warning earlier this year the original timeline for the proposed transaction could be delayed amid a March order from CADE requiring execution of additional diligence activities involving further analyses of REMAN’s operations, including the refinery’s effects and possibly competitive impacts on the downstream refining market (OGJ Online, Mar. 10, 2022).

Part of Petrobras’s broader downstream divestment program, the REMAN sale, once completed, will include Ream Participações’s purchase all of Petrobras’s ownership interest in the REMAN refinery and associated logistics assets for $189.5 million, $28.4 million of which is to be immediately paid as a security deposit, with the remaining $161.1 million to be collected at closing subject to adjustments.

Closing of the REMAN transaction would follow Petrobras’s most recent downstream divestment completed in 2021, which involved the sale of its former 333,000-b/d Refinaria Landulpho Alves (RLAM) refinery—now renamed Refinaria de Mataripe—in São Francisco do Conde in the Recôncavo Baiano region of Bahia, Brazil, to Mubadala Capital (MC), an arm of Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Investment Co. (OGJ Online, June 10, 2021).