Six companies fight to purchase Gás Brasiliano
Valor Econômico
Placed for sale again, Gás Brasiliano has six companies interested in its control. In the dispute we have Petrobras; Japanese Mitsui; Cosan; Termogás, owned by entrepreneur Carlos Suárez, associated with the Cemig (Energy Company of Minas Gerais); Fundo InfraBrasil, a fund of the Santander Bank; and Colombian Promingás, controlled by Prisma Energy International that purchased the assets of Enron. The area of concession of Gás Brasiliano caters to 375 municipalities of the State of São Paulo, including Ribeirão Preto, Barretos and São José do Rio Preto, to name a few.
The seller is the Italian Eni, which controls Gás Brasiliano through two companies, Eni International BV, with 80% of the interest, and Italgas S.p.A, which holds 20%. The Santander Bank advises the operation since 2005, when the company was placed for sale for the first time. The analysis of the financial proposals ends in December, but before closing the deal, the name of the winner will have to be presented to the São Paulo State Sanitation and Energy Regulatory Agency (Arsesp).
Since it stayed out in the privatization of Comgás in the 90's, Petrobras tries to move into the gas distribution market in São Paulo, only State where it does not have strong presence regardless of the fact there are three concessions there (Comgás and Gas Natural, besides Gás Brasiliano). Another big company interested in it, Mitsui has already demonstrated its appetite for the sector in November 2005 when it paid US$ 250 million for Gaspart, a company that was controlled by the Enron Group with interest in seven distributors of piped gas in Brazil.
For Cosan, which bought Esso's fuel distribution network, the acquisition makes sense because the grant is located in the area of influence of its alcohol plants. And since it has plans to generate energy from bagasse, the construction of gas thermal plants will allow it to sell energy the whole year instead of only in the six months of the harvest.
The area of concession of Gás Brasiliano is under the influence of the Brazil Bolivia Gas Pipeline (Gasbol) and covers 58.1% of the municipalities of São Paulo. Nonetheless, it represents only 20.4% in terms of population. The company has a contract for the purchase of Bolivian gas until 2012. In the average of the twelve months ended in September, the consumption of gas in the concession of Gás Brasiliano amounted to 520 thousand cubic meters of gas a day, less than half of the consumption registered by Gás Natural, 1.2 million cubic meters/day. In the same period, the average of Comgás was 11.8 million cubic meters a day.