Pacific Rubiales has hooked up with Colombian pop singer Shakira to contribute to the construction of a school in Cartagena. Subsidiary Pacific Infrastructure is constructing a new crude export port in the Caribbean coastal city. From a Pacific Rubiales press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
VETRA is a private oil and gas company that generally keeps a pretty low public profile although well known within the industry. Much of its exploration base is in the Putumayo where the security and community situation is, as the Colombian expression goes, complicated. Educating journalists is one part of their current strategy. From a VETRA press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
Last week the USO was picking on Pacific Rubiales and this week the focus was Ecopetrol. The first item highlights a problem we have heard in other contexts: that Ecopetrol has been extending times for paying contractors. In the particular case here, the contractor decided not to pay their workers and the USO questions why they got the contract if they did not have sufficient liquidity to deal with Ecopetrol’s payment terms
We present two stories, both related and unrelated, about small but important good works in producer communities. These were not reported by the national press but by local newspapers, the most direct form of communication with the people most affected by oil and gas operations.
Pacific Rubiales always says it has no labor relations issues but the USO continues to publish reports that it does. This week it is workers fired in the mid-2011 protests so technically they do not represent PRE labor. A second article about qualified technicians saying that Pacific will not hire them smells like the same story printed twice: PRE will not hire them because the company already fired them once. The USO – making common cause with the ELN and probably the Farc as well – is heating up the debate on kicking out multinational oil companies. Root cause is probably that they find Ecopetrol more pliant.
Ecopetrol has been pushing its good corporate citizenship with a series of press releases on its spending in 2012. Environmental investments, local purchasing and local hiring have all been touched. While this may seem like ‘tooting its own horn’, we believe such a campaign is necessary for the industry as a whole, because of the negative opinions held by the press and certain politicians. From an Ecopetrol press release, translated and with comments by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
As reported by national radio station W Radio, Alberto Mariño, manager of Coviandes, the company developing the Bogotá-Villavicencio four-lane road, referred to the project designs and required investment. According to Mariño, some US$550M for the land purchase, labor, materials and insurance policies will be allocated. He said the projected was “largely” on time according to the project plan.
We have been concerned for some time that the general labor relations situation was deteriorating in the country. The first strike in twenty years at coal producer Cerrejon for us was a wake-up call that the situation was widening beyond the usual suspects (Ecopetrol, Oxy and subcontractors). Now the USO will participate in the “First Mining and Energy Encounter” next month with the goal to coordinate labor action against multinational companies in the sector.
As reported by Dinero, Ricardo Arias Mora, president of the National Savings Fund (FNA), announced that the entity will join with several oil companies to facilitate homeownership for some 9,000 oil workers in the fields Rubiales, Quifa and Pirirí in Puerto Gaitan, Meta department.
Every Monday we publish the Petroleum Workers’ Union’s (USO) latest complaints about the hydrocarbons industry’s treatment of its workers. To read their press releases, one would imagine slavery or the Gulag archipelago or some other Dickensian scenes from the past. Here is the international organization charged with protecting workers’ rights giving the country a pat on the back. From a Ministry of Labor press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
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