Mário Guedes, former director-general of Energy and Geology, defends, in an interview with Fumaça, that the «world will not do without oil production».
In this conversation, the mining engineer also addresses questions about the national electricity and energy sector, the exploration of natural gas and lithium, the «absolute disaster» which is the law for the exploration of geological resources and the recovery of mining environmental liabilities by the industry extractive.
Mário Guedes is a miner and it was in this sector that he spent a large part of his professional life. He graduated in Mining and Geoenvironment Engineering and has a Masters in Environmental Management. He has already worked in the private sector, but twice – between 2010 and 2013 and then between 2016 and 2017 – he was a member of the board of directors of the state-owned mining development company, EDM.
He was recruited for support in the Secretary of State for Energy by Jorge Seguro Sanches, former Secretary of State for Energy (SEE), who held the position between 2015 and 2018. In April 2017, he became Director General of Energy and Geology.
He spent several months in the replacement regime until he was formally appointed, in August 2018, for a five-year term. However, three months later, last November, João Galamba, current SEE, fired him. He justified that “being a specialist in quarries and mines, it was understood that he did not have the indicated profile”.
Mário Guedes doesn't want to talk too much about it. Leave the actions with whoever took them. His fleeting passage with full powers in one of the most powerful and complex entities of the State was marked by a framework of permanent conflicts between political decision makers and regulators in the energy area, and EDP.
In dispute, for example, are the CMEC or Contractual Balance Maintenance Costs. This is one of the biggest sources of revenue for the electricity company, which was once Portuguese, but which, today, is controlled by the Chinese State, which holds 28,25% of the voting rights, after the conclusion of the privatization carried out by the government of the PSD/CDS coalition, led by Pedro Passos Coelho and Paulo Portas, when it sold the 21,35% stake in Parpública, the company that managed the state's holdings.
At the end of 2004, to compensate EDP for the early termination of energy sales contracts in 32 generation plants, following the creation of the Iberian electricity market, the CMEC were created. They were regulated in the government led by Pedro Santana Lopes, who is running as head of the list of Aliança (the party he founded), by the circle of Lisbon, in the elections of 6 October. The decision was approved 15 years ago: it took place at the Council of Ministers on 11 November 2004, in Bragança.
Sitting at the table, among others, were Álvaro Barreto, the Minister of Economic Activities and Labor at the time, who was responsible for the energy portfolio, and António Mexia, current executive chairman of EDP and who was, at the time, minister of Public Works , Transport and Communications. But three years passed before it actually came into force, in July 2007, José Sócrates was head of government and the energy portfolio was in the hands of the Minister of Economy, Manuel Pinho.
Comments