About

Formerly VP-Legal for REFICAR (at that time, a Glencore-Ecopetrol joint venture), Nicolás Rubio became general counsel of BHP Billiton’s Colombian ferronickel operation, Cerro Matoso, in 2010. In late 2012 he successfully closed the renegotiation of Cerro Matoso’s operating license (something of a holy grail in Colombian mining circles, presently), a process that had begun some three years prior to his arrival but which, during his tenure alone, has involved four distinct mining ministries, the transition between three different mining regulatory authorities and the necessity of defending the validity of the then current license before the Colombian Council of State. The successful management of the renegotiation guaranteed the company legal security until at least 2029 and possibly until 2044. ‘He has led on this, and a number of other cases’, notes Posse Herrera Ruiz’s Francisco Urrutia, ‘not just as the administrator of external legal counsel, but from the front, and he has done so in an absolutely magisterial manner’. Rubio himself notes that confirmation of the license is a win-win scenario: ‘we can make viable plans for expansion; the Colombian state will obtain an additional income of several hundreds of millions of dollars; the neighbouring communities will receive at least $2.5m in investment every year; and Colombia will maintain its position as a global leader in the ferronickel market’. In the interim, the renegotiated contact has become a standard for the renegotiation of large-scale mining contracts in Colombia.