Ecopetrol SA (EC) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Storage tanks are seen at Ecopetrol s Castilla oil rig platform, in Castilla La Nueva
(Reuters) – A plan by Colombia’s state-controlled Ecopetrol to buy $3.5 billion to $4 billion in shares of electricity transmission giant ISA could provide the oil company income stability amid crude price volatility, Armando Zamora, the head of the country’s oil regulator, said on Monday.
The transaction is an example of how oil companies are trying to reorient their portfolios toward the energy transition as the global fossil fuel industry reels from the coronavirus pandemic, which destroyed fuel demand and caused the loss of thousands of jobs.
Ecopetrol SA, Colombia’s biggest oil company, would hand over about $4 billion to the government in exchange for control of another state-sponsored outfit, the electric utility giant known as ISA. The deal, as investors from Bogota to New York see it, has all the markings of a cash-strapped federal government forcing a state-run company to bail it out.
The US oil and gas rig count stood steady at 461 in the week ending Feb. 24, rig data provider Enverus said, but Permian operators added rigs as recent severe weather loosened its grip on the region. The total number of rigs chasing primarily oil and those chasing gas were both steady week on week .