Written by Juliana Aguilera. The article is part of the HELP-report by Klimakultur, published in November 2025.
In 2023, I opened an internet search page to find out whether anyone had ever written about the Brazilian fashion industry’s dependence on cultural investments made by oil companies.
What I found was exactly what I expected: nothing. No one had connected the dots and published anything about it online.
So I decided to broaden my research and look for analyses on fossil fuel companies’ investments in Brazilian culture. The examples, in this case, are endless:
Petrobras Cultural, the state-owned company’s program created in 2003, sponsors the Gramado Film Festival — one of the best-known film events in Latin America — and the São Paulo Municipal Theater.
In 2024 alone, Petrobras allocated R$ 250 million (47 million USD) to cultural projects.
Shell, which sponsors Museu do Amanhã in Rio de Janeiro — a venue that receives 7 million visits a year — and created the Shell Theater Award, considered the most traditional prize in the Brazilian theater scene.
And Equinor, a sponsor of the Pinacoteca in São Paulo, one of the city’s most famous museums, as well as the Museu da República in Rio de Janeiro — known for having been the residence of one of the country’s most important presidents, Getúlio Vargas, where he took his own life in 1954.
Searching for resistance
Yet my search once again led me to a blank page. I kept investigating, convinced the mistake must be mine — that I wasn’t using the right keywords.
Juliana Aguilera
But after several days, I still found no study, report, article, or news story addressing the flow of oil money into Brazil’s cultural sector, even though this practice has been routine for decades.
Two years passed, and here I was again, searching for these topics, hoping that this time something would appear. And something did — but it was only my own 2023 article, in which I wrote: Silent and permissive: the soft power of oil in fashion events.
The discussion continues to be ignored in Brazil, despite rising global temperatures and the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels.
It is curious that this happens in a country whose political narrative seeks to present Brazil to the world as a leader in the energy transition, boasting one of the cleanest energy mixes globally and much of the Amazon rainforest. All that jazz.
The reasons behind the lack of debate about oil giants’ sponsorship and influence in cultural, sports, and educational events stem from economic inequality, the absence of public policy, and political biases.
Context of economic disparity
Even as a child, twenty years ago, I knew Petrobras — the Brazilian state-owned fossil fuel company — as the business that supplied gasoline, something present in my everyday life because I saw its logo at the gas station when we filled up the car.
also heard that the company promoted culture through Petrobras Cultural.
Despite knowing about Petrobras Cultural, I had never attended any event sponsored by them, because access to in-person cultural experiences such as theater, cultural fairs, or museums is neither free nor common in the lives of most Brazilians.
Culture is a neglected topic among many Brazilian politicians, who prefer to make campaign promises about improving security, jobs, and income.
According to a survey conducted by UOL, state governments in Brazil spent less than 1% of their available resources on culture in 2024.
On average, only 0.54% of the annual budget was used — dropping to 0.11% in the states of Rio Grande do Norte (Northeast) and Roraima (North).
A separate study — Cultural Information and Indicators System (2011–2022), released by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in 2023 — shows that public spending on culture has steadily lost ground within overall public expenditures at the federal, state, and municipal levels.
The Rouanet Law
Without public policy support, cultural expenses weigh heavily on Brazilian families’ budgets, leading many to exclude activities such as sports, theater, and arts programs from their lives.
And, it leads to more fossil fuel sponsorships, incentivized by law:
According to Martin Grossman, a specialist in cultural studies and aesthetics and full professor at the University of São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts, since the State fails to provide resources, cultural incentive laws help bring extra funding to culture.
One such law is the Rouanet Law, created in 1992. It allows companies to redirect up to 4%
of their income tax to cultural projects approved through a federal selection process.
This is the gap that large polluting companies use to insert funds into the sponsorship of cultural events, sports, and education — creating emotional ties with the population.
Where there is a massive gap, the oil industry does its greenwashing
In 2024, Shell was the 5th largest investor under the Rouanet Law, allocating R$ 84.5 million to approved projects. Of that total, 82.5% went to the Southeast region, the wealthiest in the country, reinforcing unequal cultural access across regions.
Symphony orchestras, museums, and cultural centers were among the beneficiaries. In 2025, Shell declared it would invest more than R$ 120 million in culture and sports in Brazil, supporting over 40 projects.
The funding includes literary fairs, museums, symphony orchestras, festivals, programs for including people with disabilities in sports, women’s soccer, events dedicated to Black culture, among others.
Together with the Ministry of Culture, Shell also launched, in February 2025, the Rouanet Youth Program, a pioneering initiative to promote cultural engagement among Brazilian youth.
In the ministry’s celebratory social media post, there was no criticism whatsoever of the fossil fuel company’s involvement.
Shell claims its sponsorships aim to reinforce the company’s commitment to society and foster a better future. But we know that’s not true.
A recent investigation revealed that the Caminhos do Amanhã campaign — aired during prime-time soap opera commercial breaks and on social media — drove a 13% increase in fuel sales at Shell stations.
Equinor follows the same script. On its website, the oil company states: in Brazil, our sponsorship portfolio focuses on supporting culture, education, and sports.
Indeed, Equinor back an impressive list of initiatives: an institution in Rio de Janeiro that has provided professional arts training to vulnerable youth for over 20 years, the Pinacoteca — one of my favorite museums and one of São Paulo’s largest — with an educational program that benefits around 100,000 people per year; and an organization that promotes sports for people with visual impairments.
And no one is talking about how problematic this is.
The Godfathers of climate chaos
The first step toward developing critical thinking about fossil fuel sponsorship is to reduce financial dependence by creating revenue streams from other sources. I chose not to name the smaller organizations funded by oil companies to avoid exposing them. I know that, for many, this is the only place where they can secure funding to keep their projects alive. Are they wrong to accept this money? In a reality where resources are scarce, I don’t believe so.
In Europe, people easily associate climate change with oil companies. In Brazil, that is not the case.
When the licensing of Block 59 at the mouth of the Amazon River was being debated, many left-wing individuals downplayed the socioenvironmental impacts and believed exploration would bring development to the region. Major figures who should be opposing fossil fuels echoed denialist narratives.
While claiming to promote education and a healthier future, oil companies are polluting the world, driving global warming, and deepening inequalities.
It deeply saddens me to see how far we are from a mature debate — how difficult it still is for people to understand the need for a just energy transition and to fight the powerful greenwashing of Big Oil.
Shell, for instance, offers free admission to the museums it sponsors on April 13th, in celebration of its anniversary.
Who wouldn’t want to enjoy a free cultural event?
I support the position of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who has said that fossil fuel companies are the Godfathers of climate chaos and should be banned from advertising while destroying the climate.
How to connect the dots and cultivate critical awareness of fossil sponsorships
With the increasing frequency of floods and heat waves, this topic has become slightly more visible in people’s everyday experiences, but we need to talk about this more — much more.
When I ask my parents, who are over 70, not to go out in the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. when temperatures hit 36ºC, 38ºC, they don’t take it seriously. I always insist: I work with this — listen to me — this heat kills!. We need to teach people that heat kills more than floods do in Brazil.
We also need to teach that, although most of Brazil’s emissions come from land-use change driven by agribusiness, our country is dirtying its energy matrix by drilling for more oil than necessary.
The public would understand the issues behind fossil sponsorships better if environmental and climate education were more present in their lives.
Read more from Juliana Aguilera in this Desmog article about Petrobras:
How Brazil’s oil giant is using gen-Z science and climate influencers to green up its image
