Gás natural como fator de competitividade da indústria química: estudo de caso: Millennium Chemicals – Bahia

Abstract

This work contributes for the understanding of the impact of the environmental issues on the competitiveness of the chemical industry, through the study of case of fuel exchange, combustible oil for natural gas, in the Millennium Chemicals, chemical industry located in the petrochemical complex of Camaçari-Bahia. First, it presents the context in which an increasing use of the natural gas in the Brazilian and world-wide energy matrix takes place. After that, the relationship between competitiveness, technological innovation and environment is explored, using a neo-Schumpeterian vision of technological progress. Then it is established a comparison between two approaches to the relationship between environment and industrial competitiveness. The first approach is the traditional orthodox vision and the alternative is the one proposed by Michael Porter and Class Van der Linde (1995). The first perceives the environment requirements as factors that contribute for reducing competitiveness of the industry because it demands investments in the mitigation of the pollution, and these costs should be added to the final prices of the products. According to the alternative view proposed by Michael Porter and Class Van der Linde (1995), is possible for a company to get the double benefit accruing from these investments, by the adoption of innovations in the productive process. In Porter´s vision, the environmental regulation should be more rigorous in order to stimulate innovations and consequently the improvement of competitiveness, due to the rationalization in the use of the natural resources. Moreover, impacts not only in the dimension of cost of production will be verified, but also of quality, security and operation requirements that also are important dimensions for the industrial competitiveness.