What will the election of Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s anointed successor, as president of Brazil mean for the country’s energy sector?

The short answer is that she surely owes her electoral victory to a large number of voters wanting things to change as little as possible. Brazilians are quite happy with the way things are going in the country at the moment, and Dilma, as she is known, ran on a continuity platform and is unlikely to make any radical changes in such an important area.

But she is not Lula, and some developments in the sector were already underway. The long answer, then, is that to the extent we are likely to see any changes, it is that the country’s energy sector may become more central to a national political and developmental strategy.