History
The company arose from the assets reverted from the "Mares Concession",[9] awarded by President Rafael Reyes to the Tropical Oil Company, which began operating in 1921 with the Infantas 2 well and the subsequent start of production of the field Cira-Infantas in the Middle Magdalena Valley (VMM). The giant oilfield is located 11 km south of the city of Barrancabermeja and about 500 km northeast of the capital Bogotá. Even though there were attempts as early as 1941 for the Colombian government to legally take over the Tropical Oil Co.,[10] it was not until the expiration of the Concesión De Mares contract that a transfer of ownership would take place.
The reversion of "De Mares Concession" ("Concesión De Mares") to the Colombian State on 25 August 1951 gave way to the Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos, which had been created in 1948 by means of Law 165 of that year. The growing company assumed the reverted assets of the Tropical Oil Co. that began oil activities in 1921 in Colombia with the implementation of the Cira-Infantas Field in the Middle Magdalena River Valley. Ecopetrol undertook activities in the oil chain as a state-owned industrial and commercial company in charge of administrating the nation's hydrocarbon resources, and grew as other concessions reverted and became part of its operation.[11]
The nationalization of Ecopetrol was not smooth and met with some opposition and skepticism as to how the company could in fact be able to keep up with the complex and expensive operations without outside expertise in the changing international market. A call for nationalization was nevertheless made.[12]
In 1961, it assumed the direct management of the Barrancabermeja Refinery. Thirteen years later, it purchased the Cartagena Refinery, built by Intercol in 1956. In 1970, the company adopted its first by-laws, which ratified its nature as a state-owned commercial and industrial company, linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy and fiscally supervised by the General Controllership of the Republic of Colombia. In September 1983, the discovery of the giant Caño Limón Field was announced. Ecopetrol, in association with Oxy, reported a reservoir with reserves estimated at 1.1 Goilbbl. Thanks to this field, the company began a new era and in the year 1986, Colombia began to export oil again. During the 1990s, Colombia extended its oil self-sufficiency with the discovery of the giant Cusiana and Cupiagua Fields in the foothills of the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes, bordering the Llanos Orientales. The fields were operated by BP.
In 2003, the Colombian government restructured the Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos, in order to internationalize it and make the company more competitive in the framework of the global hydrocarbon industry. Decree 1760, dated 26 June 2003 modified the organic structure of the Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos and made it Ecopetrol S.A., a public stock-holding corporation, one hundred percent state-owned, associated with the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and governed by its by-laws contained in Notarized Document No. 2931, dated 7 July 2003, issued by the Second Notary Public of the Bogotá D.C. Circle. The transformation released the company from State functions as the administrator of the oil source and the ANH (Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos) or in English, the National Hydrocarbon Agency, was created to carry out the function.
As of 2003, Ecopetrol S.A. began an era in which, with more autonomy, it accelerated its exploratory activities, its capacity to obtain results with a business and commercial vision and the interest in improving its competitiveness on the world oil market. Internationally the company operates also in the Gulf of Mexico, from Houston, Texas, the Mexican Gulf of Mexico offshore Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche, and in the Brazilian offshore, with offices based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[13]
On August 20, 2021, the company acquired a 51.4% controlling stake in Interconexión Eléctrica, previously held by the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, establishing a diversified energy conglomerate in South America.[14]
