Hector Manosalva Rojas: Yes. I’d like to say or tell Bruno that during the last 18 months, we have diligently and because of the good attitude of the national government, we’ve been managing revenues and payment from the bank of around COP 51 trillion. And in addition to the possibility we’ve had recovering those balances in an adequate manner, there are other permanent commissions between the Finance Ministry and Ecopetrol to channel and to manage the payments in the times that we’ve been managing historically. Of course, we must say that this is part of the product of the policy of increasing the prices of gasoline. In today’s price conditions, we would have a small surplus that might offset the deficit being generated by the non-increase in the prices of diesel with the figures already mentioned by María Catalina, but which would also reflect a behavior that comes from the mark the demand of those fuels.
The increase of diesel is three — I’m sorry, gasoline is 3.3%, and diesel has also increased considerably, and that’s an increase of 6.3%. The dynamics of demand are associated to the final result of the subsidies to both diesel and gasoline are being evaluated by the national government by the Ministry of Mines, by the Ministry of Finance. So probably those balances would go back to the original conditions of the FEPC from 10 or 13 years. And deficit per year would be COP 2 billion or COP 3 billion. We would go back to that condition or that position. If the conditions take place the national government is thinking about enacting several decrees about the higher control of the price of those fuels to the different segments of the market that require it.
I’m talking about a decree that would be final to eliminate the subsidy to large consumers. We’re talking about a regulatory division that would probably bring about a lower price of fuels to the market. And with those decisions and those actions, the expectation is that in at least a year, we’d be returning to the normal conditions of the balance in FEPC. That would be at least COP 2 billion or COP 3 billion per year — trillion per year.
María Catalina Escobar Hoyos: Thank you, Bruno. In relation to the second question on dividends and what we were expecting, in the next 12 months. But we’re expecting pursuant to what was approved in the General Shareholders Meeting as a dividend of COP 312 per share. Over which, as I just said, we made a first payment to the minority shareholders and to the majority shareholders and to the majority shareholder. And we’re pending those additional payments for 8,000 million during the year. And that distribution of dividends would correspond to an ordinary dividend payment of 60%, which is within our framework of policies of distributing between 60% and 90% and an extraordinary dividend of approximately 7%. And right now, we don’t have any additional, anything additional to what I’m just telling you. Thank you.
Operator: From Credicorp Capital, she asked, what expectations do you have about the differentials in the prices of and what expectations do you have on the tax rate for the second quarter?
Felipe Trujillo: This is Felipe Trujillo, I’m the Marketing and Commercial Vice President in relation to Brent and the spreads. We see a positive trend for the interest of Ecopetrol. We see spreads of one digit versus this quarter and the same quarter of last year. We had a recovery of that that differential of 3.4 in the first quarter of 2023. We had two digits. First quarter, we’re managing one digit, and this is how we’re forecasting it for the remaining quarters.
María Catalina Escobar Hoyos: Thank you for your question. This is Maria Catalina Escobar. Relation to the expectation on the tax rate for the second order of 2024 as you realize, you could realize our effective tax rate after cut out of the first quarter of 2024 was 5%. It’s important to mention that that rate assumes because of the level of rent that we experienced during the quarter, a surcharge in the income tax of 10%. What is the expectation that we would have for the second quarter of 2024? According to the behavior of the brent that we’re seeing, the price of Brent would be above $82.3 or $82.5 per barrel and that lead to that surcharge income to be around 50% instead of the 10% that we had. And that that directionally would make the effective ex tax rate to be higher in the second quarter than the one we saw in the first quarter of the year.
Operator: Alejandro Sánchez from [indiscernible]. Is there any more information about Orca Norte-1? The results, show there would be a viability, a commercial viability of those findings. Thank you.
Alberto Consuegra Granger: Alejandro, good morning. This is Alberto Consuegra in relation to Orca Norte. We continue to do the technical assessment of having found gas in the fields different from the Orca Norte, the initial discovery that assessment or not. That evaluation should be finalized when they planned at the second quarter, and we’ll give you more information when we provide the results for that period. The second thing we have to highlight is that we offshore should be seen as a province or we have four large basins. The one associated with the different fields that we have with Oxy well, will be drilled in the beginning of this year and the end of this year and the beginning of next year. Anything related to the Orca well and everything related to the northern area, which was our main well, this means that we’ll continue drilling, trying to find other prospects.
And then in the South Caribbean basin, we have to see and we have to understand how we assign capital or allocate capital in the best way. All of this analysis will probably lead to have a better or a clearer perspective when we have the results from the different wells.
Operator: You’ve indicated that Ecopetrol might participate in the development of offshore renewables. Could you please indicate what your return parameters for that investment are?
Ricardo Roa Barragan: Alejandro, good morning. This is Ricardo Roa. In our portfolio and in the road map of 24B or going to 24D, we have to incorporate in our energy matrix projects with renewable energies, one of them with a higher potential, and that would be the power offshore. The government has taken has done a round of allocating areas of the Caribbean Sea to develop those potentials of energy, power, which is one of the main supports for the eventual production of low emission hydrogen, and we start off from that expectation of developing projects using that type of technology. The parameters and the figures are we don’t have them yet. We are trying to see if we can allocate those levels of investment required in the offshore.
Our evaluation metrics would give us a central priority to develop those types of projects in the territorial platform where there are good factors and wind regimes compared to planned factors that could be up around 50% to 60%, which is the greatest benefit shown by the wind regimes in the Caribbean Sea. If we look at it in that manner, we’d be interested in participating in the developments that according to the scheme stated by the government in these rounds of allocating areas for the potential exploration of the power, to be awarded to a person, a public, entity in the country, or a juridical person in the country, and we’d have that possibility of exploiting all the power, both inshore and offshore. Already made contact with large players of the world who have the capacity and the skills to develop those technologies in the offshore.
And that’s why it’s part of the portfolio of the projects we permanently evaluate.
Operator: There is no more questions, so we’ll give the word to the President. He wants to give you a fine message.
Ricardo Roa Barragan: Thanking you for your presence, for your questions that have allowed us to clarify several aspects of what we already announced. And to reiterate that at Ecopetrol, we’re more than a 120,000 people who work very hard, every day to protect as we have shown you what is under our domain or control for Ecopetrol to continue being the big or the great company of all Colombians and to be able to generate in them and in the evolution of our main indicators, the possibility of having available resources required to move forward in our roadmap of energy transition. Thank you very much.
Operator: Thank you, everybody. With that, we close the conference of our results of the first quarter in 2024. Thank you for your participation. You can now disconnect.
