Above photo: «Ecopetrol» de Dvalencia – Own work, used under license CC BY-SA 3.0 vía Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ecopetrol.jpg#/media/File:Ecopetrol.jpg

Ecopetrol S.A. (BVC: ECOPETROL; NYSE: EC; TSX: ECP) announced yesterday that the General Shareholders’ Meeting, held March 26^th, 2015, approved an ordinary dividend of 133 Colombian pesos (COP$133) per share. The General Shareholders’ Meeting approved a lump sum payment of the total dividend to minority shareholders which will be paid beginning on June 22, 2015.

The dividend payable to the Colombian government, Ecopetrol’s majority shareholder, will be paid as follows:

Dividends to the Nation
Installments	Payment date	COP$
1	October 23, 2015	1,383,000,000,000.00
2	November 20, 2015	1,383,000,000,000.00
3	December 15, 2015	1,383,000,000,000.00
4	Between December 21, 2015 and March 11, 2016	690,176,646,687.00
Total		4,839,176,646,687.00

Based upon current Colombian securities law, the dividend will be paid to shareholders who are registered as holders of Company shares as of five trading days before the date of the payment.

The company’s new board of directors going forward will be as follows:

Representatives from the Government of Colombia:

Minister of Finance and Public Credit (currently Mr. Mauricio Cardenas)
Minister of Mines and Energy (currently Mr. Tomas Gonzalez)
Director of the National Planning Department (currently Mr. Simon Gaviria)

Independent representatives:

Gonzalo Restrepo Lopez
Joaquin Moreno Uribe
Jorge Gabino Pinzon Sanchez
Luis Fernando Ramirez Acuna
Horacio Ferreira Rueda (representative from the hydrocarbons producing provinces)
Roberto Steiner Sampedro (representative of the minority shareholders)

During the annual meeting, Ecopetrol also appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as the external auditor for fiscal year 2015.

The company’s treasury reserve accounts of COP$14.76 trillion were capitalized by increasing the nominal value of shares from COP$250 to COP$609 per share, demonstrating the confidence of investors in the company and boosting its long term financial sustainability.

Ecopetrol, an integrated petroleum company is the largest corporate entity based in Colombia and is among the top 50 oil companies in the world and the top four in Latin America. Besides Colombia, where Ecopetrol generates over 60% of the national production, it has exploration and production activities in Brazil, Peru & the US (Gulf of Mexico). Ecopetrol owns the largest refinery in Colombia and most of the pipeline and multi-product pipeline network in the country. Ecopetrol is significantly increasing its strategic participation in bio-fuels.

Above photo: «Ecopetrol» de Dvalencia – Own work, used under license CC BY-SA 3.0 vía Wikimedia Commons