$EC Ecopetrol collapsed under Petro.

Not because the company failed.
Because the president did.
The stock peaked the month before he took office.
Then it fell for two years and stayed down.
The business was fine. The policy wasn't.
Petro froze oil exploration entirely.
No new contracts.
A climate stance.
The rest of the region kept drilling andColombia stopped looking.
You can't grow reserves you're forbidden to search for.
Then came the deal.
In 2024, Ecopetrol had a chance to buy into the most productive oil basin in America, alongside Occidental.
Ecopetrol's own board approved buying into a premium Permian oil field
A deal its internal analysis said would lift net profit by 14% a year.
The company wanted it.
Its own board approved it, seven votes to two.
The president killed it in 24 hours.
Not for financial reasons.
He didn't like that it involved fracking.
He didn't want the debt.
He didn't want Colombian money working abroad.
Ideology over arithmetic.
The board folded the next morning. They walked away from an asset worth far more today than the price they refused to pay.
The market read it instantly.
Downgrades.
The company drained to plug the national budget.
The stock stopped pricing oil and started pricing Petro.
Here's the part most people miss.
The state owns most of Ecopetrol.
So the biggest driver of this stock was never the oil price.
It's who holds the presidency.
And Colombia votes this year.
My thesis is simple: Abelardo wins, and Ecopetrol pumps.
A pro-oil president reverses the freeze on day one.
The deals return. The growth returns. The confidence returns.
And the discount Petro stamped on this stock comes off fast.
The market is already starting to price an exit of Petro.
That bounce off the bottom isn't about oil, it's positioning ahead of a change of government.
Policy broke it. Abelardo fixes it.
I'm not betting on oil.
I'm betting on someone running Ecopetrol like a company again...not a cash register for the budget.