News and AnalysIs for

We wrote a few weeks ago that ‘Debt is the new black’ about how Colombian oil and gas companies were using debt rather than equity. At the CWC Oil and Gas Summitt and Exhibition in Cartagena recently, Scotiabank’s Rolf Schmitz gave a good explanation of why there is a strong interest in M&A in Colombia but that companies are using debt rather than equity to finance their activities.

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.

Counts were back up to 37 almost exactly at the average of the previous 52 weeks (36.5). On average during the past year, 85% of incidents have been initiated by the Armed Forces and this week the percentage is almost exactly that at 84%. Our 4-week Moving Average incident count was down 5% to 36.5 incidents per week exactly the 52 week average.

The graph shows the percentage of oil and gas employment which is sourced locally. These survey estimates come the annual Hays “Oil and Gas Global Salary Guide”, a fascinating look into the structure of industry employment. Considering industry comments about finding talent, it is perhaps surprising to see that South America sits in the middle of the chart, with a level of local sourcing ahead of Africa and just behind North America.

April 9th has much symbolic value for Colombians. On that day in 1948, a great popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá. His death precipitated a riot that destroyed buildings and businesses in the city center. Many were killed as government troops fired on the crowds. More importantly, it was the starting point for a wave of civil inter-factional violence that eventually resulted in the founding of the Farc and later the ELN. This year was the 65th anniversary of Gaitan’s death and with the possibility of peace as a backdrop, support grew for a march to mark the date and show that the civil population wanted the talks to go well..

On Friday April 5th, the National Environmental Licensing Authority (ANLA) convened the general public, representatives of the public and private sectors, control agencies, nongovernmental organizations, ethnic minorities, rural associations and academics to participate in the 2012 Accountability Public Hearing.