03/10/2024 – 8:59
The transfer of control of Amazonas Energia is becoming an electrifying soap opera, involving influential business groups, one of the most powerful Ministers in the Lula Government – and a regulatory agency squeezed in the middle. At stake: the future of Amazonas Energia, a historically loss-making and tragically indebted company that supplies energy to the most remote corners of the country, where the jungle prevails, there are no roads and the logistical cost is prohibitive – not to mention technical losses and energy theft which lead the national rankings.
+ Âmbar makes a new proposal to take over Amazonas Energia with an investment of R$6.5 billion this year
The saga began in June, when J&F Investimentos, the holding company of brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista, agreed to pay R$4.7 billion for the Eletrobras thermal plants that generate the energy distributed by Amazonas Energia – and expressed to Aneel its desire to take over the concession. Days later, the Government published an MP that transformed these thermal plants into “reserve energy” – in practice, deleting Amazonas Energia’s biggest cost line and passing on the bill to consumers across Brazil. Furthermore, the MP provided regulatory security for other changes to the Amazonas Energia concession contract.
Months later, however, J&F has still not been able to complete the transaction. Both the purchase of the thermal plants and the transfer of control of Amazonas Energia are in the middle of a shootout at ANEEL, the agency that has to pen everything. The drama – which some have already dubbed ‘ANEELflix’, given the almost daily twists and turns in the case – is testing the limits of the autonomy of Brazil’s regulatory agencies, which have been hollowed out by the Executive and captured by sectors of the Legislature in recent years.
Read the full report at Brazil Journal.
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