Canadian oil producer Parex Resources expects to drill 30 new wells this year in order to continue expanding its production in Colombia and keep with its success rate to date of 70%, the company’s general manager Lee Distefano was quoted as saying.
When we started writing up company results, Canacol confused us with its production figures broken down between Tariff and Non-Tariff. We expect that shortly this distinction will come to an end.
Colombia’s financial regulator SuperFin is preparing a set of norms that will regulate the information provided by companies in the hydrocarbon and mining industries for the general public and investors.
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.