Published in 03/04/2019

This Thursday, March 28^th, the Board of Directors of Pré-Sal Petróleo appointed mechanical engineer, Jose Eduardo Vinhaes Gerk as the company’s new CEO. The executive assumes the leadership of the company as from April 01 for a term of two years, replacing engineer Ibsen Flores Lima. Gerk will also become part of the company’s Board of Directors, composed of five members.

Educated at the Military Engineering Institute (IME - Instituto Militar de Engenharia), with a master’s degree and doctorate in mechanical engineering from COPPE/UFRJ (Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute for Graduate Studies and Engineering Research of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) and specialization in Petroleum Engineering at Petrobras University, Gerk has 30 years’ experience in the oil and gas industry. The engineer began his career at Petrobras, later acting as a consultant and business administrator and is full professor of the engineering program of the Veiga de Almeida University.

At the head of Pré-Sal Petróleo, the executive will have, among other challenges, that of contributing towards the ongoing success of the auctions of areas of exploration and production under the production sharing system, especially the auction of the surplus volume from the transfer of rights agreements. The company is responsible for the management of theproduction-sharing contracts and for the commercialization of the oil and gas of the Union, besides participation in the production unitization agreements.

Ibsen Flores Lima was the chief executive officer of Pré-Sal Petróleo S.A., from November 2016 to March 2019. Under his management, the company enjoyed significant growth in all its areas of operation. In this period, PPSA assumed the management of 14 production sharing contracts, and executed three production unitization agreements (Brava, Atapu and Mero). The company obtained the first revenues coming from the beginning of the commercialization and from the first agreement on equalization of expenditures and volumes bringing R$ 1.13 billion in 2018 into the coffers for the Union.

Lima’s management was based on dialogue and collaboration, creating a very productive environment with the oil and gas industry, especially for companies investing in the pre-salt.