News and AnalysIs for

I am just back from a major technology conference and I happened to read a Thomson Reuters study about downstream and technology. These got me thinking about the role of technology in “greening” the industry.

There was more excitement than expected on Sunday night but the eventual outcome was that predicted by pundits if not polls. Gustavo Petro garnered by far the largest number of votes but voting patterns had important implications for how the presidential elections might turn out.

There has been a flurry of fracking articles lately, mostly negative one way or another so I started wondering about what they were trying to accomplish.

As this was being finalized on Sunday morning, February 27^th 2022, Russian troops had entered the Ukraine’s second largest city but Kyiv, the capital, had still not fallen. By the time you read this, the situation will no doubt be different.

Colombian E&Ps have published their strategy and investment documents for 2022 and many of them are looking beyond Colombia for growth, including Ecopetrol. Is this normal diversification or cause for concern?

Last week the Analyst was in a meeting which touched on energy transition and he illustrated the challenge with some off-the-cuff statistics about converting the North American rail fleet. After the call, he checked his math which was fairly good but only because he got both components wrong in opposite directions.

Sunday morning and a blank page. I checked my list of pending topics. I looked over what we published in the past week. I put on my cleanest dirty shirt. I sacrificed a chicken – ok an egg – in the hope of attracting the muses. Nothing.

“Normal” does not seem to mean much lately but there is some hope that the Covid-19-induced uncertainty has passed and for 2022 we will just have the usual or normal uncertainty. So what happened with Colombia-focused stock prices over the last two years?

Deep breath. Time to write my annual “Fearless Forecasts” article where I give my baseline scenario for the coming year. Unfortunately – for me, for the industry, for Colombia, for the world – we enter this year with a higher-than-average amount of uncertainty.

Now that the Ecopetrol / ISA deal is official, the NOC has to report consolidated numbers. For the company’s overall numbers, the accountants should have no difficulties. But how will the Line-of-Business (LoB) reporting look? We some hints with the 3Q21 report.