News and AnalysIs for

Presidents of the community action boards of Tauramena and Villanueva, two villages that fall within the influence area of the “Llanos 32-34 and 3D Max” seismic exploration program, attended a meeting with the companies to define agreements surrounding social investment, wage, transport and monitoring.

Reyes Reinoso, president of Ecopetrol’s Cartagena Refinery (Reficar) spoke with Portfolio.co regarding the refinery’s modernization project. According to the executive, the project is now in its final stage and Ecopetrol’s board of directors have now approved a proposed increase in the total budget.

It is not easy but it certainly looks that way when production rises over 40% year-over-year and over 50% sequentially. Revenue, Net Income, Cash are all up over last year. Even 44 days of TransAndino Pipeline interruptions could not prevent Gran Tierra from having a grand quarter.

Ecopetrol’s results always grab our attention because they come out first. It is tempting to think of them as a bellwether for the industry if only because of the weight the state-owned-enterprise (SOE) has in total Colombian market calculations. So when the giant disappoints, as it did in 1Q13, it is worth asking the question if the causes are common to the industry in general or are unique to Ecopetrol.

Business magazine Dinero reported that the Dian penalized the oil company CECSA, a Canacol subsidiary, by closing of the CECSA offices from April 26 until April 29. The cause was an error in CECSA’s crude oil sales invoices. The error happened in 2008 and there was no tax evasion, which is why the Dian did not impose any fines on the company.

Gran Tierra recently published a 1Q13 production update and we thought it illustrative of what many mid-sized companies have been saying, providing an upbeat message to compensate for other down signals.

There were a number of recent articles – of which we pick on ones from La Republica and Dinero from last week – to say that Colombian investors were streaming out of Ecopetrol and into Pacific Rubiales. The reasons were increases in Pacific Rubiales’ production and reserves, flat reserves and concerns about production in 1Q13 for Ecopetrol. All this is true so the logic is impeccable. The graph shows that perhaps investors are not as responsive to this logic as the articles suggests.

Pacific and Ecopetrol have been fighting over an escalation clause in the Quifa contract for over a year now. In late March, the day before Pacific was to publish its 2012 annual results, an arbitration board ruled in favor of Ecopetrol. After weeks of saying that there were legal avenues to be explored and pointing out that the arbitration board specifically stepped away from ordering the company to pay, Pacific now says they will honor the decision.

As reported by Caracol Radio, Congress will discuss the lawsuit between Ecopetrol and Pacific Rubiales for Quifa field exploitation. According to Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, Pacific cannot refuse to pay Ecopetrol 1.5M oil barrels (equivalent to US$382M), after the Colombian courts ruled in favor of Ecopetrol.

Chilean operator with participation from Korean industrial giant LG has published its first set of annual results after purchasing Winchester Luna and Hupecol in early 2012. From a corporate perspective all of its absolute indicators are up significantly because of success in Chile and the acquisition of significant production in Colombia. However, as the graph shows, EBITDA margins in Colombia are poorer than the Colombian average (which was pulled down by poor results at Canacol) and much poorer than the company’s operations in Chile.