Eyeing the Future, Brazilian Oil Company Partners With McCombs and Jackson School

The McCombs School of Business, in partnership with the Jackson School of Geosciences, recently hosted a three month-long custom executive education program for a team of Brazilian oil executives at The University of Texas at Austin.

The executives all work for Brazil’s Petróleo Brasileiro, S.A, also known as Petrobras. Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras was founded in 1953 and had the monopoly for oil exploration and production until 1997, when, by law, the industry was opened to private companies. Today, Petrobras is still a significant oil producer with an output of more than two million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The program, “Business Acumen for the Energy Executive,”was designed by Texas Executive Education to meet Petrobras’ unique needs. The team of nine executives, representing Petrobras’ Exploration and Production group, also gained a broader vision of the macro-economy of oil and learned about current trends in the industry.

“We wanted to get a broad view of the oil industry in order to have a deeper understanding of all angles of the business from different perspectives, such as accounting, engineering and geophysics, as well as the legal ramifications,” said Mariela Martins, geologist and a Petrobras technical representative for Exploration in Joint Ventures at Petrobras.

The program was an outgrowth of the university’s five-year, $7.5 million agreement signed earlier this year with Petrobras for research, study and continuing education for the company’s high potential, mid-career managers. In the 1970s, Petrobras and the university had a similar relationship; several of the students who attended the university 30 years ago are now in senior leadership positions. They are looking to develop the next generation of leaders in the same way they reached their own potential.

For the university, the Petrobras course offers a tremendous opportunity to help the company develop its future leaders and to know those leaders. For McCombs and the Jackson School, this program has been a springboard for future collaboration on other projects.