Blockchain expands digital governance in the natural gas sector
Article by José Luiz Kugler, professor at FGV EAESP, and Otávio Soares, specialist in Blockchain for Business, published in the magazine GV Executivo , presents the results of the research of the GoGas project, conducted by Petrobras to modernize digital governance in the natural gas sector.
Most large organizations still rely on legacy systems—old technologies that have been adapted over time but have become inflexible, expensive, and incompatible with other platforms. In complex industries with multiple stakeholders and decentralized data, such as energy, these systems make it difficult to obtain a reliable, integrated view of operations. This requires the creation of numerous interfaces, which increases the risk of data failures or manipulation, especially in contexts that require real-time control.
In the case analyzed, the expansion of the gas distribution network and the entry of new participants made the collection, integration and accounting processes increasingly laborious and susceptible to errors. Petrobras faced difficulties in ensuring accuracy and transparency in a market that moves millions of cubic meters of gas per day and generates, with ICMS alone, approximately R$1.5 billion in monthly taxes.
It was in this scenario that the GoGas project was born , prioritized in the 2022 cycle of the Innovation Challenges program. The objective was to guarantee reliability in the measurement and accounting of operations — known in the sector as nominations — and to ensure that the injection of gas into the pipelines occurred in a traceable manner and in accordance with the established contracts.
The new blockchain-based solution was designed with three main criteria: scalability , to support the growth of operations without loss of performance; flexibility , to integrate multiple agents and contractual rules; and accuracy , essential to mitigate legal risks and ensure trust in data.
The project positions the use of blockchain as a key piece in the digital transformation of the controllership and as a reference for sectors that deal with sensitive, distributed and auditable data.
