Petrobras (PETR3; PETR4) Outperforms Aramco, Expands to Ivory Coast

Petrobras had a higher net profit margin than Saudi Aramco for the first time in the first half of 2026, based on an evaluation of company financial reports.

For that period, Petrobras showed a net margin of 29.15%. This means it kept 29.15 reais in profit for each 100 reais of sales. Saudi Aramco came in at 25.48%.

The list was put together by economist Cloviomar Cararine from Brazil’s Dieese research group and the Single Federation of Oil Workers, FUP. It looked at eight large oil companies from 2020 through the first half of 2026.

After Petrobras, the next figures were: Chevron at 18.01%. ExxonMobil at 16.33%. BP at 14.83%. Equinor at 12.84%. Shell at 9.94%. TotalEnergies at 9.44%.

In the first half, Petrobras reported net profit of 85.1 billion reais, or about $16.5 billion. That was up 37.6% compared with the same months in the prior year.

Cararine said the firm did better because it made more, benefited from higher world oil prices tied to the conflict between Iran and United States, cut some general costs, and leveraged Petrobras’ combined setup that covers both oil work and refining.

On Thursday, the company signed production sharing pacts with the Ivory Coast government and with Petroci Holding, the state oil company, covering eight offshore exploration areas.

Via Petrobras Netherlands B.V., Petrobras will own 90% and run the blocks labeled CI-513, CI-600, CI-601, CI-602, CI-603, CI-605, CI-701, and CI-702. Petroci keeps the other 10%.

The deals bring Petrobras into these offshore zones. They also fit the firm’s plan to look for fresh oil and gas reserves beyond Brazil.

Brazil: poverty grows and inequality increases

According to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), Brazil's GDP grew by 1.3% in 2018. The latest Focus Bulletin, published last Monday by the Brazilian Central Bank, pointed out that Brazil's GDP growth in 2019 should be around 1.1%. Therefore, if all goes as expected by the experts from the top 100 financial institutions in the Brazilian market, which make up the Focus Bulletin, 2019 will have a lower GDP growth than 2018.

This scenario allows us to say that the Brazilian economy continues at a very slow recovery pace. As the Brazilian GDP advances with very little vigor, it seems that the country's economy should recover pre-crisis level only in 2022.

According to the technical director of Dieese (Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies), Clemente Ganz Lúcio, if the Brazilian economy continues at this pace, it will take a decade for the country to recover the level of employment that existed before the crisis that began in 2013.

Currently, Brazil has 12.4 million jobless people, a rate of 11.6%.

According to Rafael Guerreiro Osório, a researcher at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), the country's performance in the areas of income distribution and education pushed performance down. For Osorio, "we are not doing well in education. And this year, we have not seen a proposition of educational policy that promises extraordinary results, if any. In life expectancy, there is no way to change much from one year to another. So the hope would be for income, but our situation today will keep us close to the middle of the ranking." Brazil occupies the 79th position among 189 evaluated nations.

To make matters worse, Brazil has won the terrible title of runner-up in the world this year, second only to Qatar.

According to the newspaper O Estado de Minas, "Brazil is the second most unequal country in the world among those who provide estimates based on tax data, second only to Qatar"

In Brazil, 1% of the richest population (about 1.5 million people) concentrates 23.2% of the share of total income declared by individuals to income tax (in Qatar the richest 1% concentrates about 27% of total declared income).

According to The State of Minas, "the income concentration of this small group of rich people in Brazil is 164% higher than in Sweden, where the one hundredth richest share accounts for 8.8% of the total income. Sweden, from the 1930s until recently, saw the income share of the richest hundredth shrink from 12.3% to 8.8%, in Brazil, over the last nine decades, the distribution pattern has shown a steady and persistent concentration: 1% richer answered between 20% and 25% of the total income".

However, part of the Brazilian financial market, media, and government analysts insist that the Brazilian economy is growing again. For the thousands of Brazilian unemployed and underemployed, this kind of analysis is a kind of derision. For the thousands of Brazilian unemployed and underemployed, this kind of analysis is a kind of derision. While most face a day-to-day world record in homicide, hate crime, incarceration, state violence, unemployment and lack of prospects, part of the country's richest 1% insists that everything is getting better.