Brazil held an auction last week that attracted some of the largest oil companies in the world, including Chevron, ExxonMobil and Equinor (formerly Statoil). The auction comes on the heels of a crippling series of strikes that had briefly paralyzed the Brazilian economy. Earlier this month, a strike by truckers disrupted the flow of goods across the country, leaving supermarket shelves empty and forcing the slaughter of millions of chickens because feed couldn’t reach farmers. The disruptions were motivated by the soaring cost of diesel and the situation presented a political nightmare for the Brazilian government. The solidarity with the protests from Brazil’s leading presidential candidates increased the pressure on President Michel Temer to take action. He proposed lowering and fixing the price of diesel, a move that crashed the share price of state-owned oil company Petrobras and forced the ouster of the company’s CEO, Pedro Parente. A return […]