Pacific Exploration Changes Name to Frontera Energy Corporation

Canadian oil company Pacific Exploration & Production Corporation has officially changed its name to Frontera Energy Corporation. For the beleaguered firm that spent 2016 restructuring to emerge from creditor protection, the move was made to “mark the beginning of a new era for the company,” it said in a statement.

The company expects to begin trading common shares under the name Frontera, which means “border” or “frontier” in Spanish, on the Toronto Stock Exchange, under the ticker symbol TSX:FEC, beginning tomorrow, June 14. It’s corporate website has already been moved from to www.Pacific.Energy to www.FronteraEnergy.ca.

In addition to its headquarters in Toronto and Canadian location in Calgary, the company has an office in Bogotá and Lima, Peru. On top of other financial and operational challenges, the company was dealt a large blow last year when, due to the expiration of a long-held contract, it was forced to relinquish to state-controlled oil company Ecopetrol its large holding in Colombia’s Rubiales oilfield, the largest and most productive in the country.

In 2015, after Ecopetrol announced its decision to take full control of the Rubiales field, the company changed its name from Pacific Rubiales to Pacific Exploration & Production Company. The change to Frontera Energy thus marks its second rebranding move in the past 22 months.

Barry Larson, who took over in January as chief executive officer of Frontera Energy Corporation, said that the change reflects the company’s new commitment to efficiency, discipline, a limited geographic focus, and the firm’s core values.

“Our new corporate identity reflects the significant transformation the company has made following its restructuring, as well as a new progressive and disciplined focus that will generate success,” said Larson today in a statement. “To ensure the company can maintain sustainable production and growth, the board has taken steps to narrow Frontera’s geographic focus and reduce organizational scale, complexity, and cost while maximizing operating and cost efficiencies.”

Frontera Energy has detailed four specific principles that it now plans to build around as it recovers from past hurdles and missteps: (1) successful debt restructuring focused on discipline growth, (2) an ongoing turnaround aimed at optimizing the corporate structure to realize savings, improve margins, and create operating efficiencies, (3) prioritizing production growth and exploration upside, particularly through development drilling in highly prospective areas, and (4) unlocking value through a divestment strategy that attempts to improve liquidity and capture the potential of high-value infrastructure assets.