About

As a leading Colombian developer and seller of hydrocarbon products, Global Energy Development has been exposed to declining oil and gas prices globally. Nevertheless, the company management has successfully implemented its vision to create countercyclical measures and has been able to sell a lot of its valued assets. Now the focus on the company has been to make an efficient use of its existing assets, while maintaining high standards of compliance and sustainability and producing the strategic shifts that will later position it at the centre of the industry. The legal team led by vice president of legal and compliance Ana Maria Revollo has been an integral part of this strategy, providing solutions that go beyond the mere legal analysis of issues to the involvement in core business issues of the company. This has resulted in the use of impaired assets for environmental and operational purposes – helping the company to consider its assets in a different manner. ‘For example, thanks to our advice a dry well was turned into an injection well for secondary recovery of reserves, which in turn led to important savings in water transportation’, says Revollo. At the same time, the recent implementation of a system for environmental, social and health and safety alerts has helped the team cover more areas with limited resources. Recently, the team gathered attention by working an arbitration proceeding against a service company whereby the company claimed damages for the contractor’s negligent operation during a Well Service ‘workover’ proceeding. Revollo says: ‘The claim amounted to approximately $4m and was finally settled, despite the common expectation of a judgement by the court, as it would have set precedent on the matter of negligence and contractual liability’.