(Bloomberg) -- For Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, oil prices are going up at exactly the wrong time.

The right-wing nationalist beat expectations on Sunday by finishing five percentage points behind front-runner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the first round of presidential elections as falling fuel prices gave Bolsonaro a boost. Now, ahead of a second-round vote, oil prices have posted the biggest gain since July as OPEC and its allies consider an output cut of more than 1 million barrels a day.

Pump prices have an immediate impact on public opinion, while it takes time for Brazil’s federal government to benefit from high prices through taxes and royalties. Though higher oil prices are pushing shares of state-controlled Petrobras higher, they’re bad news for Brazilian motorists. 

Petrobras doesn’t immediately pass higher prices on to consumers, but OPEC’s possible production cuts mean that Bolsonaro probably won’t see any additional declines in gasoline and diesel costs during the final stretch of the campaign, and Lula will continue attacking him for pursuing market-based prices.

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