Ecopetrol

Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos, Colombia's national oil company, was created in accordance with Law 165 of 1948. It has supervised the country's oil industry since the reversion of the De Mares concession—controlled for thirty years by a former subsidiary of Exxon, the Tropical Oil Company—to the national government on 25 August 1951. From its original base in Barrancabermeja (department of Santander), in the area of the concession, Ecopetrol has expanded its operations into the Llanos and Magdalena Valley. In contrast to the more familiar Latin American pattern, it has pursued its goal of oil development through a policy of close cooperation with foreign oil companies and multinational corporations, as illustrated by its entering into "association" contracts with several of the latter in the 1980s. In 2003 the state reorganized Ecopetrol into a public stock company. Ecopetrol no longer administers national oil policy; instead, the Colombian government formed the National Hydrocarbons Agency to regulate energy production and distribution.

See alsoEnergy .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harvey Kline, Colombia: Portrait of Unity and Diversity (1983).

René De La Pedraja, Energy Politics in Colombia (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Avellaneda C., Alfonso. Petróleo, colonización y medio ambiente en Colombia: De la Tora a Cusiana. Santafé de Bogotá: Ecoe Ediciones, 1998.

Bendeck Olivella, Jorge. Ecopetrol, historia de una gran empresa. Bogotá: Ediciones Punto Llano, 1993.

                                           Pamela Murray