On October 27, Humberto Campodónico, chairman of Petroperú’s board, announced his resignation from the Peruvian state-owned company after fuel supply problems due to the company’s financial instability and after the outstanding capital contribution of $2.3 billion until 2022.
Speaking to RPP Noticias, Campodónico said he had communicated his decision to the Minister of Energy and Mines, Alessandra Herrera, who presides over the General Meeting of Petroperú Shareholders. His resignation has not yet been made official.
“We think there are various obstacles that need to be overcome. We can achieve this if we find that consensus.
“At this moment I have proposed my resignation from the presidency of Petroperu to seek the achievement of that consensus”, said the official, after emphasizing that the reorganization of Petroperu can materialize only if various controversies are overcome.
According to Campodonico, his decision would help to understand that Petroperu “understands the moment the country is going through, the moment in which the company has been given a significant amount of money and has to move forward”.
In an important fact published in the Superintendence of Peruvian Securities Market, Petroperu announced the irrevocable resignation of Campodonico from the post he assumed on April 2.
“To move forward, we need to build consensus – which is increasingly under attack – for the Talara refinery,” said Campodónico, referring to the modernization of the refinery, which is owned by Petroperú and should be completed in December.
Campodónico noted that Petroperú officials, most of whom took office in April when the company’s board had to be restructured, would not have wanted to use the more than $1 billion in capital that was given to Petroperú this week.
“It is a significant amount that the Treasury can use for other purposes. But if this financial support was not given, the problems could be bigger”, he said.
Petroperu’s board of directors was restructured in April in the face of a corporate governance crisis that led to a review of the company’s credit rating by S&P Ratings and Fitch after the audit of its 2021 financial statements was delayed due to conflicts with PwC.
The board was then unable to get the auditor to conduct a formal review of the financial statements, generating a delay that led to instability for the Peruvian state-owned company’s lenders.
For Campodónico, the financial support that Petroperú had to receive from the state became inevitable, “but it brings with it a very strong criticism of the company, for the fact that it has built a “white elephant”, that has no liquidity, that it is useless.
“We are at the crossroads of thinking about how the company can move forward by having a long-term consensus of various political, academic and business forces,” said the company’s president.
Campodónico also explained that the Peruvian government’s capital contribution of $1 billion will be used “solely and exclusively” to finance the company’s overdue loans with financial entities, offload fuel and solve the current supply problem.
With information from Bloomberg
