The evidence is unequivocal, Gustavo Petro is destroying Ecopetrol.

BY ALBERTO J. BERNAL-LEÓN

Several years ago, I was talking with President Álvaro Uribe at a meeting about the prospects for Colombia and his government, and I remember saying something similar to this: “President, I’ve told you this before, but let me repeat it. The most important social reform you left us, after regaining physical security thanks to democratic security, was the democratization of shareholdings at Ecopetrol. Forcing the state-owned company to accept private capital forced the company to adhere to the most basic guidelines of corporate governance, guidelines that oblige companies to become serious entities.

And later, with the issuance of shares in New York, which meant the company now had to comply with the corporate obligations required by the New York Stock Exchange, we managed to reach the pinnacle of seriousness and credibility for Colombia’s flagship company.”

Ecopetrol reached a value of US$138.65 billion on May 1, 2012, when its stock reached US$67.48 on the New York Stock Exchange. Today, Ecopetrol’s stock is worth US$8.59*. The stock has fallen 88.5% from its all-time high, and has fallen 56% since the cursed day when most Colombians thought it was a good idea to appoint Gustavo Petro as president.

Some thoughtful readers will say, “Look, Alberto, stop lying, tell us that Ecopetrol’s share price drop has nothing to do with Petro, but with the new winds blowing in the international markets, be serious!!”. Well, let’s do the exercise. Normalizing the charts since mid-June 2022, when Petro won, the results are as follows: (1) Argentina’s YPF has gone from 100 to 957, implying an unprecedented increase in the share price; (2) Exxon is now worth 107.3, implying a 7.3% appreciation since 2022; (3) Socialist Lula da Silva’s Petrobras is worth 90.4, implying a loss in value of around 10%; and as I said before, (4) Ecopetrol’s share price has collapsed by 56% since Petro won. The evidence is unequivocal, Gustavo Petro is destroying Ecopetrol.

We’ve heard Mr. Petro pitch various ideas for Ecopetrol, all of them, without exception, schizophrenic. That Ecopetrol can’t continue signing oil exploration contracts, which is equivalent to telling a taxi driver he can’t change the oil for his “pichirilo” in the future; that Ecopetrol has to become a solar energy company, implying that Petro hasn’t realized that the vast majority of solar energy companies, 35% to be exact, are from China and receive direct subsidies from the regime in order to survive; that Ecopetrol has to become an artificial energy company, despite the fact that there’s no human possibility that Nvidia will stop selling its advanced chips to OpenAI or Meta to sell them to the “wannabe” little dictator in Zipaquirá, and demonstrating an absurd ignorance about the effects of artificial intelligence on the environment.

Let me explain: according to XM data, electricity consumption in Colombia in 2024 reached an estimated 72,234 gigawatt hours. Comparing that energy expenditure with the artificial intelligence industry (data centers alone), which was estimated at 500,000 gigawatt hours in 2024 (source: EIA), the energy consumption of technology companies is 690% higher than that of a country of fifty-something million inhabitants. And the expectation is that by 2030, energy consumption in data centers worldwide will reach 1,250,000 gigawatt hours, at least 17 times more than Colombia’s current total energy consumption.

Mr. Petro boasts that he’s “going to save the world from climate catastrophe” by turning Colombia’s flagship oil company into an artificial intelligence company. The problem is that if the charlatan ruling Colombia were to be even moderately successful in his crusade, he would be brutally contributing to the end of the world, because to produce the energy that this new Ecopetrol would need, thousands of tons of coal would have to be burned. And Petro doesn’t even acknowledge it. Or maybe he does… Either scenario only generates one reaction: national grief. Watch out for 2026, gentlemen, either we don’t unite, or we sink.

Alberto J. Bernal-León, a native of Colombia, is Head of Global Strategy at XP Investments.

This article originally appeared in La Republica newspaper in Colombia. Republished with permission from the author.

*As of June 3, 2025.

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