The The Coordination Company of Public Enterprises (EMCO) has confirmed that it is evaluating profiles, together with all members of the Petroecuador Board of Directors (Ministry of Energy, Senplades), to select the new manager of Petroecuador EP. A few weeks ago, the Minister of Energy, Fernando Santos, confirmed that the current administrator, María Elisa Soledispa, expressed her willingness to continue in her old position and that excellent professional profiles are being sought to cover this key administration.

It became known these days a letter sent on March 27 by Joaquín Ponce, president of EMCO, to Energy Minister Fernando Santos Alvite and Jairon Merchán of the National Secretariat for Planning and Development (Senplades), with six names of potential leadership candidates sent to his office. The press release states that comments and subsequent feedback on the named names are expected. It is clarified that these names do not constitute a shortlist, but rather an entry “that will enable identification of the profile for formal evaluation of the shortlist.”

Proposed by profession are:

Oswaldo García, former President of the Society of Engineers of Ecuador (North) and current member of the Advisory Council of SIDE North, He explained that some of the names from that list were submitted by his union and other academic communities a few weeks ago. The engineers’ initiative came after the President of the Republic, Guillermo Lasso, invited professional associations to submit proposals from high-level experts. He just reminded that this happened after Minister Santos made statements in a colloquial tone that it is difficult to get a good profile and that there are good ones abroad, but the salary, according to what those good experts told him, “they didn’t have any cigarettes”.

He explained that at that time the Society of Engineers sent a public letter to the president accepting the challenge of finding these good profiles in Ecuador, and four of the names listed come from professional unions. Only the last two were not proposed by his sector, but he assures that the chosen one should leave the list of six.

For García, the public company can no longer spend time on its own and he hoped that a final administrator would be appointed immediately.

In any case, EMCO indicated that “at this time, no shortlist has been formed and no Board of Directors has been scheduled.” He also said that once the shortlist is formed and the committee convened, the profiles will be made public and the steps of the process will be communicated through their official channels.

Petroecuador Company, During the government of Guillermo Lasso, it had six managers, including responsible and definitive ones. In the first row was Gonzalo Maldonado, followed by Pablo Luna. Ítalo Cedeño was definitely elected, but he was embroiled in a scandal due to the alleged interference of his wife in defining certain contracts and positions. He was followed by Washington Gallegos. Additionally, Hugo Aguiar was appointed, also definitively. However, after being ratified by EMCO, he had to resign amid a series of complaints about possible acts of corruption during his administration. Now María Elisa Soledispa is in charge.

Petroecuador failed to take off in terms of production. As of March 29, the Agency for Regulation and Control reported production of 371,700 barrels per day, far below the production of between 390,000 and 400,000 barrels that could be expected. Recently, it had to declare force majeure due to the suspension of pumping in SOTE and the protests of indigenous communities in four blocks. It also faces several challenges ranging from the need to carry out several tenders, including Campo Amistad, capturing lighter gas, to avoiding problems with indigenous communities. In addition, it remains to be seen what will happen to the Transecuador gas pipeline system, which is threatened by problems of regressive erosion in the Coca River.