About

Among the four foremost energy companies in Latin America, as well as being one of the largest globally, Ecopetrol is the chief beneficiary of Colombia’s one-million-barrel-a-day oil production and the primary oil producer in the country. This enviable status has resulted in the company generating revenues of $14.3bn in 2016, showing that despite global oil prices being exceedingly low the company is still an incredibly important company; Ecopetrol is the largest company in Colombia, when measured by a variety of metrics including sales and market value, by some distance. Led by legal vice-president Dr. Fernán Ignacio Bejarano, an individual who boasts experience working in government and academia to go alongside his extensive legal knowledge, the Ecopetrol legal department is highly regarded by the in-house legal community. In common with other legal departments at oil companies, it has been forced to do ‘more with less’ as budgetary constraints caused by deflated commodity prices begin to bite. Towards this end, a source from the legal team explains they have undergone an internal restructure: ‘That goal required the change of the legal vice-presidency structure, the incorporation of new talents to the team, and the optimisation of the human resources, taking into account the new challenges of the company in an adverse environment’. Alongside this, the team has also embarked upon a number of endeavours aimed at easing the burden on the company’s operations. ‘Ecopetrol’s legal vice-presidency designed several legal strategies to face the very tough challenges created by the price crisis in the oil and gas industry’, explained the source. ‘Accordingly, we structured procedures to renegotiate contracts and agreements in different market scenarios, led relations with the government to manage the crisis from a legal perspective, and actively participate in the revision of the general regulation within the industry’.