Ecopetrol
 |
|
| Sociedad Anónima | |
| Traded as |
BVC: ECOPETROL : EC : ECHA |
| Industry | Oil and Gas |
| Founded | 1921 |
| Headquarters | Bogotá, Colombia |
|
Key people
|
Juan Carlos Echeverry, (Chairman & CEO) |
| Products | Fuels, Lubricants, Petrochemicals, Biofuels |
| Revenue |
 US$26.99 billion (2014) |
 US$ 8.4 billion (2012) |
|
| Total assets |
US$ 64.4 billion (2012) |
|
Number of employees
|
9,315 |
| Website | www |
Ecopetrol, formerly known as Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos S.A. (English: Colombian Petroleum Co. Not to be confused with the US owned and operated Colombian Petroleum Co. (COLPET) and sister company South American Gulf Oil Co. (SAGOC) dating to the 1930s which were taken over by the state owned Ecopetrol in the 1970s) is the largest and primary petroleum company in Colombia. As a result of its continuous growth, Ecopetrol forms part of the Fortune Global 500 and is ranked 346, it belongs to the group of the 25 largest petroleum companies in the world, and it is one of the four principal petroleum companies in Latin America.
The company arises from the assets reverted from the "Mares Concession" awarded President Rafael Reyes to the Tropical Oil Company, which began operating in 1921 Infantas well 2 and the subsequent start of production of the Cira-Infantas, It located 11 km south of the city of Barrancabermeja and about 300 km northeast of Bogota.Even though there were attempts as early as 1941 for the Colombian government to legally take over the Tropical Oil Co., it wasn't until the legal end of the contract of the Concesión De Mares expired that a transfer of ownership could take place. The reversion of "De Mares Concession" ("Concesión De Mares") to the Colombian State on 25 August 1951 gave way to the Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos, which had been created in 1948 by means of Law 165 of that same year. The growing company assumed the reverted assets of the Tropical Oil Co. that began oil activities in 1921 in Colombia with the implementation of the Cira-Infantas Field in the Middle Magdalena River Valley, located some 300 kilometers northeast of Bogotá. Ecopetrol undertook activities in the oil chain as a state-owned industrial and commercial company in charge of administrating the nations hydrocarbon resources, and grew as other concessions reverted and became part of its operation. The nationalization of Ecopetrol was not smooth and met with some opposition and skepticism as to how the company, if held nationally could in fact be able to keep up with the complex and expensive operations without outside expertise in the changing international market. A call for nationalization was nevertheless made.
In 1961, it assumed the direct management of the Barrancabermeja Refinery. Thirteen years later, it purchased the Cartagena Refinery, built by Intercol in 1956. In 1970, it adopted its first by-laws, which ratified its nature as a state-owned commercial and industrial company, linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, fiscally supervised by the General Comptrollership of the Republic of Colombia. In Sept. 1983, the best news for the history of Ecopetrol and some of the best news for Colombia was given: the discovery of the Caño Limón Field in association with OXY, a reservoir with reserves estimated at 1.1 billion barrels (170,000,000 m3). Thanks to this field, the company began a new era and in the year 1986, Colombia began to export oil again. During the 1990s, Colombia extended its oil self-sufficiency with the discovery of the Cusiana and Cupiagua giants in the Foothills of the Plains region, in association with the British Petroleum Co.
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Wikipedia