Petrobras Brand Guidelines: Law 2,004, the BR Symbol & the PetroBrax U-Turn

A state oil company written into law in 1953.

Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., trading as Petrobras, was created by Law 2,004, signed by President Getúlio Vargas on 3 October 1953, according to Portuguese Wikipedia. The law set out Brazil’s national oil policy, defined the role of the National Petroleum Council and established a state monopoly over oil, with Petrobras as the company that would run it; the new company began work in 1954 with assets handed over by the council. English Wikipedia records the campaign slogan of the period, “O petróleo é nosso” — “the oil is ours.”

Under that monopoly Petrobras ran exploration, production, refining and transport in Brazil from 1954 to 1997, Portuguese Wikipedia says, while wholesale distribution and retail stations remained outside its exclusive remit. English Wikipedia dates the start of the REDUC refinery near Rio de Janeiro to 1961 and the opening of Cenpes, its research centre in Rio, to 1963; the petrochemical subsidiary Petroquisa followed in 1968.

In 1971 the company’s distribution business and station network passed to a subsidiary, BR Distribuidora, and in 1972 it set up Braspetro to explore abroad, according to Portuguese Wikipedia. English Wikipedia says the 1973 oil crisis hit the company hard, and that a field found in the Campos Basin in 1974 helped restore its finances.

The monopoly ended with Law 9,478 of 6 August 1997, which opened Brazilian oil exploration to other companies and created the national petroleum agency, the ANP. Petrobras has since competed with other producers in its home market while remaining under state control.

Deep water, pre-salt and a racing livery.

Petrobras built its reputation offshore. Portuguese Wikipedia lists a run of water-depth records from the Campos Basin, from 174 metres in 1977 to more than 1,700 metres in 1997, and links the PROCAP-3000 deep-water technology programme, launched in 2000, to the discovery of the pre-salt layer in 2007. English Wikipedia names the Tupi field, later called Lula, among the discoveries of 2007 and 2008 in the Santos Basin, made by partnerships that included Petrobras, Shell and Galp.

Portuguese Wikipedia says that in December 2017 the pre-salt layer accounted for more than half of the oil and gas produced in Brazil for the first time, according to ANP figures, and that the floating production unit Almirante Tamandaré, which began operating in 2025, became the country’s largest oil platform.

The brand has long travelled through sport. English Wikipedia lists Petrobras as a sponsor and fuel supplier of the Williams Formula One team from 1999 to 2008 and again from 2014, and as a McLaren sponsor from 2018 until the end of 2019. Portuguese Wikipedia says a team under the Petrobras Lubrax name has taken part in the Dakar Rally since 1987, with trucks, cars and motorcycles, and that Lubrax is the company’s international brand most used in motor sport. English Wikipedia adds sponsorship of the Rio club Flamengo from 1984 to 2009 and describes the company as a major supporter of the arts in Brazil.

The identity itself has a dated story. The Oil & Gas Journal reported on 2 January 2001 that Petrobras, “which first launched its logo in 1954,” had announced it would rename its retail fuel brand PetroBrax, with a new name and logo devised by the Brazilian consultancy UND; the company said the change reflected its new direction and its ambitions abroad. Two days after the announcement, the journal reported, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso ordered the company to keep its retail name, and the Petrobras name stayed on the stations.

National oil companies and their image.

National oil companies present themselves differently from the listed majors. Most are owned or controlled by a state, and their identities often sit close to the national story: a flag or national colours placed beside a refinery skyline, a company name that includes the country, and a founding date tied to a concession, a nationalisation or a new state. The imagery tends to repeat across the category: offshore platforms photographed at dawn, drilling rigs in desert or jungle, tanker terminals and pipelines running to the horizon.

The brand also reaches the street. Many national oil companies run fuel retail networks at home, and sometimes abroad, so the identity has to work on a petrol-station canopy, a pump, a lubricant bottle and a forecourt sign as well as on a corporate tower. That puts a premium on a simple mark and a small set of strong colours that read from a moving car.

A third strand is people and the public. Engineering academies, scholarships and graduate programmes appear prominently in their communications, alongside sponsorship of national sports teams, marathons, motor racing, museums and cultural centres. These programmes carry the company name into places far from the oilfield, and they often appear in annual reports next to production figures.

Finally, the financial documents matter more than they used to. As several national oil companies have listed shares or floated subsidiaries, their annual reports, sustainability reports and IPO prospectuses have become major brand documents in their own right, with consistent typography, photography and colour. This guide reads each company through those public materials, separating what independent dated sources document from what the company says about itself.

Car Wash, divestments and a licensed BR.

The company’s most serious recent episode began on 17 March 2014, when Brazil’s Federal Police opened Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato), an investigation into money laundering that, according to Portuguese Wikipedia, widened into a suspected cartel of construction companies working on Petrobras contracts, as described by federal prosecutors. English Wikipedia says that in January 2018 Petrobras agreed to settle a US class action brought by investors. On 28 September 2018 The Maritime Executive reported that Petrobras had reached settlements with the US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, admitting that senior executives had made corrupt payments to politicians and that its books and internal controls had failed; the Justice Department noted the company’s cooperation and that it was itself a victim of its executives’ conduct. The report added that Petrobras had replaced its board and senior management and had reached a separate settlement with Brazilian authorities.

Between 2015 and 2022 Petrobras sold a long list of assets, Portuguese Wikipedia says, including Petrobras Argentina in 2016 and the last of BR Distribuidora in 2021. On 19 August 2021 the distributor renamed itself Vibra Energia, IstoÉ Dinheiro reported, with a new name and brand by the Tátil Design studio; its stations, it said, would keep the current visual identity and the BR symbol as exclusive licensees of the Petrobras brand, in a network of about 8,300 stations. Lubrax lubricants and BR Aviation stayed with Vibra.

Today Petrobras is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. English Wikipedia says the Brazilian federal government holds a majority of its voting shares directly, with further stakes held through the national development bank BNDES and the sovereign fund, and that its other shares trade on B3 in São Paulo, with depositary receipts in New York and a listing in Madrid. Portuguese Wikipedia says its 2026–2030 strategic plan names Argentina, Colombia, São Tomé and Príncipe and South Africa for expansion abroad.

For a design guide, Petrobras shows how a national name and a symbol from the 1950s can outlast a sell-off of the stations that carry them. Compare Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state-controlled oil company, and Petronas, another state-owned national oil company. For this guide we use a deep green, a warm yellow and an off-white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Petrobras’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.