Municipalities through which the processed gas passes want to receive again financial compensation

Deputy Júlio Cesar (DEM-PI) will propose a bill to enhance the transparence of the distribution of oil and natural gas royalties. The income should be distributed by the Federal Budget Oversight Board (TCU) and no longer by the National Oil Agency (ANP). Júlio Cesar’s decision was announced at the end of an audience of the Committee on Finances and Taxation, on Tuesday (12/2), in which deputies criticized the decision of ANP to deny the payment of royalties from natural gas to the municipalities through which the processed gas ducts solely pass.

Since 2002, ANP changed the understanding that had been adopted by Petrobras, and started to consider that processed gas, ready to be consumed, was no longer natural gas, but a derivate from that raw material. Thus, only the municipalities in which there is direct extraction of gas from the nature are entitled to receive financial compensation; those in which there are only delivery points for states concessionaires are not eligible to receive royalties.

Since then, more than 150 municipalities filed lawsuits to receive the resources. Last month, 41 of them were being benefited by court decisions.

Arguments
The supervisor for the control of government participations of ANP, José Gutman, defended the agency’s position: “Classifying gas ducts and delivery points as embarking and disembarking facilities, with the purpose to receive royalties, would be in disagreement with the Constitution. ANP fully complies with the prevailing laws and was not in any way unfaithful to the concept of natural gas contained in Law 9478/97 and in the very Constitution”, he argued.

However, that is not the opinion of the technical consultants Eugênio Roberto Maia and Décio Barbosa, former supervisors at ANP.

Barbosa criticized the adoption of the concept of processed gas, with the purpose to deny the payment of royalties: “natural gas is both humid and dry; it is both the processed and the raw one. Thus, it is nonsense to say that only the municipalities in contact with the raw gas have the right to receive royalties, because the legislator understood it differently.”

The consultants said that the very glossary of ANP defines as natural gas the one already processed and ready for consuming. Furthermore, they affirmed that, technically, there is no basis for considering processed gas as a derived product from natural gas.

Standards
Deputy Manoel Junior (PSB-PB), who asked for the audience, said he will keep fighting for ANP to change their understanding about the payment of royalties.

“ANP has only to resume making what Petrobras had been making for a long time. Were Petrobras technicians, when they were in charge of that distribution, literally analphabets or did they not know how to interpret legislation? And ANP, which was established in 1997, distributed royalties during five years, as Petrobras did, and afterwards, just with a technical note, undid that?”

Manoel Junior asked the representative of ANP the reason why the municipalities receiving royalties because of a court decision have the right to fewer resources than the ones that have been already recognized by the agency. José Gutman alleged that court decisions determine the payment according to standards of 2002.

The deputy also complained about the criteria adopted by ANP for the granting of natural-gas royalties resulting from the offshore and onshore exploitation.

Report - Alexandre Pôrto/Rádio Câmara
Editing - João Pitella Junior
Translation - Positive