We have expanded the list of climate policies we assess company engagement with to incorporate land-use related policy, referring to legislative or regulatory measures to enhance and protect ecosystems and land where carbon is being stored. Assessments under this category are currently underweighted in terms of their contribution to the overall company metrics. This weighting will be progressively increased over the next 6 months.
We adjusted the terminology used to describe the queries running down the left-hand side of our scoring matrix and added additional explanatory text to the info-boxes. This has no impact on the scores and methodology. It has been done following user feedback to improve clarity.
InfluenceMap Data Point on Corporate - Influencer Relationship
(1 = weak, 10 = strong)
Ecopetrol is a direct member of the Instituto Brasileiro de Petróleo e Gás and participates in several of its boards and committees (Up to date as of August 2022)
José Cotello, Adriana Sanchez
--no extract--
InfluenceMap Data Point on Corporate - Influencer Relationship
(1 = weak, 10 = strong)
Ecopetrol is a direct member of the Instituto Brasileiro de Petróleo e Gás and participates in several of its boards and committees (Up to date as of August 2022)
José Cotello, Adriana Sanchez
--no extract--
In this section, we depict graphically the relationships the corporation has with trade associations, federations, advocacy groups and other third parties who may be acting on their behalf to influence climate change policy. Each of the columns above represents one relationship the corporation appears to have with such a third party. In these columns, the top, dark section represents the strength of the relationship the corporation has with the influencer. For example if a corporation's senior executive also held a key role in the trade association, we would deem this to be a strong relationship and it would be on the far left of the chart above, with the weaker ones to the right. Click on these grey shaded upper sections for details of these relationships. The middle section contains a link to the organization score details of the influencer concerned, so you can see the details of its climate change policy influence. Click on the middle sections for for details of the trade associations. The lower section contains the organization score of that influencer, the lower the more negatively it is influencing climate policy.
Open PDF file of Data Source
Climate Lobbying Overview: Ecopetrol appears to show limited engagement on climate policies. The company has shown some support for climate action and climate policies. However, Ecopetrol continues to promote a role for oil and gas in the energy mix.
Top-line Messaging on Climate Policy: Ecopetrol appears to have a broadly positive top-line position regarding climate policy. Ecopetrol supported Colombian government’s pledge for carbon neutrality by 2050 on social media in a tweet from November 2021. The company also appears to support the Paris Agreement, as revealed in its 2021 Integrated Sustainability Management Report, released in March 2022. The company has also stated support for government regulation of climate. For instance, in its 2021 CDP Climate Change Information Request submission, it stated support for the Colombian government’s Integral Climate Change Plan of the Mines and Energy sector to decarbonize the sector.
Engagement with Climate-Related Regulations: Ecopetrol does not appear to be transparent on its engagement with climate-related regulations on its corporate website, although it states that the company participates in public policy. In its 2021 disclosure to CDP, the company expressed support for several specific measures to respond to climate change in Colombia, including support for the National Program of Tradable Quotas, a proposed emissions trading program, regulation of methane emissions, and regulation on GHG emissions in the mines and energy sector. In a March 2021 press release, Ecopetrol also appeared to support the GHG reduction target of 51% by 2030 in Colombia.
Positioning on Energy Transition: Ecopetrol supports a continued role for oil and gas in the future energy mix. The company’s website, accessed in August 2022, Ecopetrol stated that fossil gas is “fundamental” to energy transition. Ecopetrol’s President, Felipe Bayón, has consistently supported the need for oil and gas. In July 2022, while announcing the discovery of oil in the Caribbean, Bayón, appeared to support fossil gas use in Colombia. Earlier in March 2022, Bayón stated opposition to limitations on oil exploration, citing that the move would affect Colombian economy, as reported by el Colombiano.
There is some evidence to suggest that Ecopetrol supports clean hydrogen production, as stated in a report by Argus Media in October 2021 where Bayón appeared to support producing blue hydrogen until large-scale production of green hydrogen becomes competitive.
Industry Association Governance: Ecopetrol discloses its membership to some industry associations. However, this webpage appears to have not been updated since June 2020. InfluenceMap has found that Ecopetrol holds memberships with Instituto Brasileiro de Petróleo e Gás (IBP) and Asociación Mexicana de Empresas de Hidrocarburos (AMEXHI).
Additional Note: Ecopetrol is headquartered in Colombia, where InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap platform can currently only make a provisional assessment of corporate climate policy engagement, due to limited capability to access publicly available data on this issue. As it is possible that InfluenceMap is not yet able to fully capture evidence of Ecopetrol's climate policy engagement activities, these scores should be considered provisional at this time.
In addition, Ecopetrol is a listed company with more than 50% of its shares owned by the government of Colombia. State-owned enterprises likely retain channels of direct and private engagement with government officials that InfluenceMap is unable to assess, and therefore are not represented in Ecopetrol's engagement intensity metric.
InfluenceMap collects and assesses evidence of corporate climate policy engagement on a weekly basis, depending on the availability of information from each specific data source (for more information, see our methodology). While this analysis flows through to the company’s scores each week, the summary above is updated periodically. This summary was last updated in Q1 2023.