The decision was not easy for the government of Alvaro Uribe in late 2006. Head hunting agency Spencer Stuart had selected 200 candidates for the presidency of the state petroleum agency, Ecopetrol, and of the 35 finalists, the name of Javier Gutierrez was the strongest. The position was made for this engineer, born in Bogota in 1951, who at the time was president of Grupo ISA, the Colombian mixed electric company. Gutierrez has successfully led the transformation and later market emergence of ISA, and one of the main tasks of the new state petroleum agency president was exactly that, to plan and guide the first offering of Ecopetrol shares on the stock market in 2008. The dilema for the Uribe administration was whether electing Gutierrez for the new position wasn’t tantamount to robbing Peter to pay Paul. But finally, the government decided on Gutierrez, who took the helm at Ecopetrol at the beginnging of 2007.
The facts confirm that the choice was the right one. The offering of Ecopetrol shares was a success. At the end of August the process was begun, netting US$3 billion in its first phase, invested by nearly half a million investors. During the Central America and Andean regional energy integration conference, organized by BNamericas and IBC in Cartagena de Indias at the end of July 2007, weeks before the Ecopetrol offer, Gutierrez’s presentation was far and away the one that created the greatest expectations
Gutierrez’s mission is to take the Colombian petroleum agency along a path similar to the one taken by ISA, where he took over general management after the 1992 blackout, which marked the culmination of the crisis of the Colombian electrical sector. Gutierrez thus initiated a process that transformed ISA from a bureaucratic dinosaur into an international company that today is a main player in energy distribution in Latin America. After a profound restructuring of its corporate governance, and its administrative culture, ISA went public while it acquired companies or won concessions from different Latin American countries, from Peru to Brazil.
The panorama faced by Gutierrez at Ecopetrol is more benign, but more complex than at ISA. Ecopetrol is a relatively efficient enterprise, and is in the middle of the internationalization process as a result of decreased production and of crude reserves in Colombia. The public offering of the petroleum agency is an essential piece for facilitating financing for the plan, which involves huge investments. For example, the company recently partnered with Shell in a petroleum and gas exploration project in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico..
Ecopetrol is following the opposite path of other Latin American petroleum companies, such as YPFB or Pdvsa, which have intensified the role of the state in their management and strategy. Gutierrez must face criticism being heard in Colombia that Ecopetrol should invest more in exploration in lesser studied regions of the country. However, the petroleum company has decided to enter the global game to improve its possibilities of having its own growing production.
