Ecopetrol’s 9-month results to September 2019 show that, once again, the Transport Line-of-Business (LOB) has compensated for lower oil prices and poorer margins in the Refining LOB. Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC)
This week I came across the phrase “Forget whether the glass is half-full or half-empty: just be happy you have a glass and there is something in it”. This nicely sums up the ANH’s recent bid round.
Lower oil prices inevitably led to lower netbacks in 3Q19 and that could not have made the CFO happy. But production costs were slightly lower on average so operations people should not catch any flak (or at least, not any more than usual).
As we approach the end of the year, most boards are in their annual strategic planning exercises and I think this article should be required reading. It will not tell you where to drill the next well but it might give the board and senior management some perspective on their larger contribution to the economy and society.
Last week we described a Transparency International study of corruption perceptions in Latin America. For space reasons, we cut the above graph and a companion that looks just at oil countries.
Much of Latin America has rebelled against its political leaders in recent weeks. Colombia has not been immune but neither has it been as violent as Chile or Ecuador. When polled, most Colombians identify corruption as the issue that most concerns them. To understand this better, we looked at a recent Transparency International corruption study which compares 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
In his most recent Op-ed, Geophysicist Jaime Checa Jiménez spoke about the importance of implementing fracking in Colombia.
I probably got your attention out of morbid curiosity but I will not be writing about some sordid tale of shenanigans in the back streets of Barrancabermeja. Instead, I have been reading a number of articles about ethical investment lately, and companies that ethical investors are expected to shun are referred to as “sin stocks” or “vice stocks”. Shades of Crockett and Tubbs!
This was not a good quarter for oil prices and investors seemed to take it out on oil stocks. The good news is that Colombia-focused shares were not punished any worse than their global peers.
I had to reread last week’s articles and, in doing so, I discovered an inadvertent theme. We did not plan it this way but we had a lot of articles on the environment, especially the evolution of Colombia’s energy matrix.
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