Ricardo Roa’s friend who arrives at Ecopetrol runs a Canadian company with energy companies in the country

Engineer Alvaro Torres is CEO of Electryon Power, which has five alternative energy projects. Which path Ecopetrol takes, there may be a conflict of interest.

Alvaro Torres Macias, both from Santander and his contemporaries, is an old acquaintance of Ecopetrol president Ricardo Roa with whom he worked as director of the Bogotá Energy Group during the office of Mayor Gustavo Pietro. He was the last to join the plan presented by the government to the Ecopetrol Association, to replace Ignacio Pombo Villar, and ended up being elected.

He is the most experienced in energy issues for a little more than two years, and is the president of the Colombian-Canadian company Electryon Power Inc, which was founded by his son Andres to develop alternative energy projects in Colombia, in the same field that Ecopetrol will enter within the energy transition strategy. Alvaro Torres, as a member of the board of directors, will handle confidential information about the strategic plans of the oil company that may be beneficial to the interests of the Canadian company he manages and which has contracts in the country.

In the short period of its existence, Electryon Power Inc has had several projects underway in different regions of the country. The first was for Helios Cesar Ocaña to generate 200 MW in Aguachica, which is already in operation.

Amon-H2, is a wind farm in La Guajira, near the Collectura substation planned to produce 545 MW in 2027 with a capital investment of $1.5 billion.

H2 Cartagena, a solar park near Cartagena, will generate 250 MW, where green hydrogen will be produced. The ammonia liquid can be pumped to the ports of Cartagena via a 20-30 km pipeline, where it will be stored and adapted for export. With a capitalization of US$700 million, it will enter into operation in 2027.

In the province of Tolima there are two photovoltaic projects Helios Guamo and Helios Lanceros, the first located in the municipality of Guamo and the second in Melgar, each with an investment of US$16 million. Last year, it obtained interconnection approvals from Colombia’s Mining and Energy Planning Unit (UPME).. Its capacity is 100 gigawatt hours annually, and the expected date for entering commercial operation is December 31, 2024.

Profitable family alliance

Once he left the position of Vice President of Corporate Planning for Bogota Energy when Ricardo Roa retired in 2015 due to the arrival of Enrique Peñalosa to the presidency of the Board of Directors as Mayor of Bogotá, Álvaro Torres took over the presidency of Conalveas, whose main partner Andrés Jaramillo ended up being sentenced to six years in prison. years for hiring Samuel Moreno (RIP). Torres was president of the construction company for less than a year and was liquidated by the corporate watchdog in 2016. In October last year, Super issued a statement of charges against Conalveas, where Framework of the administrative responsibility system for acts of corruption.

He immediately joined Delphi Capital Partners, a company founded as recently as the same year by his sons Alvaro Francisco and Andres Eduardo Torres Rueda, which was established as an advisory and investment banking firm to direct international resources in the development of solar projects in Colombia. This resulted in two profitable initiatives, supported by Canadian investors and led by their children: Khairon Life Sciences Company Designed for medical cannabis and Electron power It is headed by his son Andrés, who in 2021 appointed his father as CEO of the newly founded company.

In the letter that Álvaro Torres addressed to Minister Ricardo Bonilla, in which he accepted his request to be part of the Board of Directors of Ecopetrol, he did not mention his current professional reality in a company with foreign capital that might conflict with the interests of Ecopetrol in which the Energy Transition Framework plans his future in the same field. : Alternative energies.

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