Brazil's liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) market is going through a peculiar moment. At the same time the country is discussing the loosening of long-standing rules on fuel use, the international scene is once again experiencing significant tension along global energy routes, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz.

This context makes it especially relevant to revisit the regulatory design of LPG in Brazil. The analysis reveals a central point: the legislation has recently changed, but administrative regulation still reflects a model designed for a very different energy environment.

Legislative and regulatory history

Brazil's LPG regulatory framework is a direct product of the energy crises of the 1970s and 1980s. During that period, the country was heavily dependent on oil imports and faced severe external constraints. The energy policy adopted sought to preserve the domestic supply of cooking gas, considered an essential product for Brazilian households — and, as a result, several energy uses of LPG became restricted.

This logic was legally consolidated with Law 8,176 of 1991, which defined crimes against the economic order in the fuels sector. The statute functioned as a blank criminal norm, delegating the concrete definition of prohibited conduct to administrative regulation. Over the years, the ANP structured the supply chain through various resolutions; today, the central rules are ANP Resolution 957/2023, which regulates distribution, and ANP Resolution 958/2023, which governs resale.

The change brought by the most recent legislation

The original text of Law 8,176/1991 provided for a broad prohibition on LPG use in engines of any kind, saunas, boilers, pool heating and automotive purposes. With the amendment introduced by Law 15,348 of February 13, 2026, the criminal prohibition now applies exclusively to LPG use for automotive purposes, in violation of applicable regulation.

This change is structural. The legislature stopped tying the criminal statute to several historically restricted energy uses and concentrated the criminal offense solely on the product's vehicular use, significantly narrowing the reach of the legal restriction on LPG applications.

The current regulatory framework and the urgency of regulatory review

The legal discipline of LPG in Brazil today is organized on three distinct levels: the economic criminal law, distribution regulation, and resale regulation. Comparing these three levels highlights the importance of the regulatory review now underway.

At the statutory level, the change was profound — the criminal prohibition was drastically reduced. At the sub-statutory level, however, the picture remained largely unchanged: ANP Resolution 957/2023 still preserves, in its Article 25, the prohibition on using the product in engines of any kind, saunas, boilers and pool heating, except for specific cases such as forklifts and certain industrial equipment. In other words, the law stepped back, but administrative regulation still reflects the restrictive logic inherited from a historical environment of scarcity and heavy state intervention.

This point is central. Whereas regulatory restrictions once found direct support in a broad criminal offense, today the statutory basis has narrowed considerably. The persistence of extensive prohibitions in ANP regulation now requires its own regulatory justification — one that is more robust, current and proportionate to the market's actual conditions.

ANP Resolution 958/2023, in turn, completes the regulatory architecture by governing resale: it keeps resale restricted to portable containers of up to 90 kg, structures the distinction between affiliated and independent resellers, requires a specific authorization per establishment, and imposes registration, documentary, tax and safety requirements, alongside express prohibitions on refilling, decanting and bulk retail sales.

The ANP's Regulatory Impact Analysis

This is precisely where the ANP's Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) becomes especially relevant. In approving the RIA on the review of Resolutions 957/2023 and 958/2023, the Agency made clear that the objective is to contribute to the development of the LPG market and to expand access to the energy source, while preserving adequate levels of safety — seeking to reduce regulatory cost, lower barriers to entry, and enable new business models.

More than that, the RIA explicitly identifies as a regulatory problem the fact that the current model imposes barriers to entry and harms dynamism and competition in the LPG distribution market. On the specific issue of use restrictions, the best-ranked alternative was precisely the immediate release of all LPG uses, suspending the prohibitions currently set out in the regulation — a decisive finding, because it shows that the regulator's own technical analysis has already concluded that maintaining the historical restrictions is no longer the most efficient regulatory solution.

The regulatory process already has a defined timeline. According to a decision by the ANP Board dated December 31, 2025, the review follows these steps: drafting the regulatory instrument by March 2026; public consultation between March and April 2026; public hearing between May and June 2026; approval and publication of the new rule between July and September 2026. This timeline indicates that the review of the LPG regulatory regime is already at an advanced stage.

Necessary caution — without freezing regulatory progress

Despite the LPG market's growth potential, the regulatory review is taking place against an international backdrop marked by energy instability. The current tension around the Strait of Hormuz is merely the most recent episode in a long sequence of geopolitical shocks that have affected the global energy market over recent decades — from the 1973 OPEC embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the Gulf Wars and the Russia-Ukraine war.

The history of energy markets suggests a fairly clear pattern: geopolitical crises are recurring, not exceptional. From this perspective, international instability cannot be treated as a permanent obstacle to regulatory evolution. If every energy crisis were considered sufficient reason to freeze structural reforms, energy-sector regulation would remain locked into the scarcity context of the 1970s.

This does not mean ignoring risks — Brazil's LPG market still partially depends on imports, and external shocks can affect prices and supply logistics. But historical experience indicates that resilient energy policies are not those that try to avoid change in moments of crisis, but rather those that build more flexible and diversified systems precisely to cope with recurring cycles of instability.

Conclusion

The review of the LPG regulatory regime represents an important opportunity to modernize a model designed for a very different energy context. The recent legislative amendment has already significantly reduced the scope of legal restrictions on the product's use; the ANP's Regulatory Impact Analysis, in turn, recognizes that the current regulatory structure may limit market development.

The challenge now is to find the balance between two equally relevant objectives: expanding the sector's economic efficiency and preserving the energy security of a fuel that remains central to everyday life in the country. If well conducted, the LPG regulatory review could represent not just a regulatory adjustment, but an important step in the evolution of Brazilian energy policy.