Lula da Silva clarifies: Brazil will not seek full membership in OPEC Plus Economy

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio announced Lola da Silva -Sunday- that his country will never join a group OPEC Plus For oil-producing countries as a full member, it will instead seek to join as an observer, according to Reuters.

This was stated in clarificationStatements It was issued yesterday during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, in which he said that Brazil “will participate” in OPEC Plus, an alliance that includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other countries, including Russia.

“Brazil must join OPEC Plus, it can be an observer,” Lula said on Sunday. “Brazil will never become a full member of OPEC because we do not want to be. What we want is (to have) an influence.”

He pointed out that his country is interested in participating in OPEC Plus so that it calls for investing some of its oil revenues in helping poor developing countries in Africa and Latin America in the field of renewable energy.

He said, “I believe that by participating in this way, we will convince people that part of the oil revenues must be invested in order to end (dependence on) oil and find alternatives.”

Last Friday, the head of the Brazilian company Petrobras, Jean-Paul Prats, said that Brazil is supposed to join OPEC Plus as an “observer,” ruling out the possibility of his country adhering to the production quotas decided by the organization.

Last Thursday, OPEC Plus invited Brazil to become a member of the group, and the Brazilian Minister of Energy said – at the time – that he hoped to join next January.

Brazil’s crude oil production reached a record level of 3.7 million barrels per day last September, an increase of approximately 17% over the same month last year and an increase of 6.1% over August 2023, according to the “Argus Media” agency.

The OPEC Plus alliance emerged in late 2016 when Russia and nine other countries joined OPEC to support declining oil prices, and since late 2022, the alliance has relied on production cuts of about 5 million barrels per day.