Petrobras Chairman Steps Down Following Brazil Dam Disaster

By Paul Kiernan 

RIO DE JANEIRO--Brazilian state-run oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA said Monday that Chairman Murilo Ferreira has stepped down definitively, as he deals with the implications of a catastrophic accident at mining giant Vale SA, where he serves as chief executive.

Mr. Ferreira had been on temporary leave from Petrobras since Sept. 14, Though he had only been at the company since an April shake-up, few had expected Mr. Ferreira to return after word of possible disagreements with Chief Executive Aldemir Bendine seeped out of Petrobras's boardroom.

For most of this month, Mr. Ferreira's time has been consumed by the fallout from a catastrophic dam failure at Samarco Mineração SA, a joint venture between Vale and Australian miner BHP Billiton Ltd. The Nov. 5 accident killed as many as 13 people, left another eight missing and polluted hundreds of miles of rivers in southeastern Brazil.

Vale and BHP have sought to brush off legal responsibility for the disaster while contributing to recovery efforts. But Brazil's attorney general's office on Friday announced a 20 billion real ($5.2 billion) civil lawsuit against Samarco "and its controllers," as the latter two companies have faced heavy criticism after the disaster.

In Rio, for example, Vale became a major focus of a demonstration Sunday that had been organized around this week's climate-change conference in Paris. Scores of protesters, some of them covered in mud, chanted slogans blaming Vale for the Samarco accident.

Mr. Ferreira said Friday that the accident has been "extremely painful" for him. He will be replaced as Petrobras chairman by Luiz Nelson Guedes de Carvalho, who has acted as interim chairman since September. Mr. Carvalho is an accounting professor at the University of São Paulo, one of Brazil's top universities.

Write to Paul Kiernan at [e-mail]

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 30, 2015 08:23 ET (13:23 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.