Petrobras and BNDES Target Critical Minerals for Brazil’s Energy Transition

Petrobras and BNDES have struck a cooperation agreement aimed at advancing research into critical and strategic minerals, placing Brazil’s largest oil company more directly into one of the central supply chain questions of the energy transition.

The agreement was signed on Monday, June 22, at an event held at BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in attendance. Petrobras chief executive Magda Chambriard presented the partnership as part of a broader effort to expand the company’s role beyond oil production and into technologies that support electrification.

“We will research the minerals essential for electrification,” Chambriard said at the event. “We want to master the technology landscape in Brazil.”

Research focus moves through Cenpes

The work will be centered on Cenpes, Petrobras’s research and development center, one of the company’s main hubs for applied technology. According to the plan described at the event, Petrobras and BNDES will exchange information and assess gaps in Brazil’s productive and technological capacity related to these mineral chains.

The partnership will also examine projects and initiatives already under way, as well as those still being developed. The stated aim is to encourage new actions that can strengthen both energy transition supply chains and the oil and gas industry.

Critical and strategic minerals have become a priority for governments and companies seeking to secure inputs for electrification, including technologies used in batteries, power systems and other low carbon infrastructure. For Brazil, the issue is not only geological or industrial. It is also about whether the country can capture more value from the technologies and processing capabilities tied to those resources.

That is the point Chambriard appeared to stress in her remarks. Rather than framing Petrobras only as a buyer or user of transition technologies, she positioned the state-controlled company as a participant in building domestic knowledge and capability.

BNDES’s role is also significant. The bank has long been used by Brazilian governments to support industrial policy, infrastructure and strategic sectors. By linking BNDES with Petrobras’s research arm, the government is signaling that minerals linked to electrification are increasingly seen as part of a national competitiveness agenda, not only an environmental one.

Oil remains the financial backbone

Even as Petrobras moves into research connected to the energy transition, Chambriard underlined the continuing importance of oil to the company and to Brazil’s external accounts.

She credited Petrobras with helping expand the country’s oil sales abroad, noting that crude has become the leading item in Brazil’s export basket. Chambriard also said she expects exports this year to reach another record. “This year, we will do it again,” she said.

The comment captures the balancing act facing Petrobras. The company is being pushed to engage more directly with transition industries, while its current scale, cash generation and international relevance still rest heavily on oil and gas. The new agreement does not displace that core business. Instead, it adds a technology and supply chain layer to Petrobras’s strategy at a time when major energy companies are trying to define how they will fit into a more electrified global economy.

The inclusion of oil and gas chains in the partnership’s scope is notable. Petrobras and BNDES are not treating the transition as a separate track detached from the company’s existing industrial base. The agreement includes initiatives that may contribute both to transition supply chains and to the oil and gas sector, suggesting a search for overlap between established engineering capabilities and newer mineral related technologies.

For investors, that overlap matters. Brazil already has a large energy industry, deep offshore expertise, a major state development bank and a federal government willing to use public institutions to shape strategic sectors. The question is whether coordination among these actors can turn mineral potential and research capacity into commercially relevant projects.

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For companies and investors following Brazil’s energy transition, the Petrobras and BNDES partnership is a signal worth watching. It points to where public policy, industrial strategy and corporate research may increasingly converge, especially in supply chains tied to electrification.

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