La concesion de Mares, el interes industrial y la fundacion de la empresa colombiana de petroleos, ECOPETROL

This article studies the reversion of the de Mares Concession managed by the Tropical Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and the creation of the Colombian Petroleum Company, ECOPETROL, in 1951. The role of different social and political actors is analyzed. Special attention is lent to the powerful National Association of Industrialists, ANDI. In contrast to other Latin American cases during the first half of the twentieth century, ECOPETROL was the result of the expiry of a contract with a multinational enterprise, not the consequence of nationalist pressures and/or expropriations. Besides this, the evidence shows that the Colombian petroleum workers did not play a major role in the creation of ECOPETROL; this refutes the existing literature on the topic. ECOPETROL was the result of negotiations that took place exclusively among sectors of the Colombian elite, North American capital, and the U.S. government.