A sharp fall over the past two weeks in the share price for Pacific Rubiales, a Canada-based company whose main assets are in Colombia, is undeserved, a company official said Tuesday.
Luis Pacheco, the company’s vice president of planning, told reporters in a press conference that the company has reported more proven oil reserves and a jump in net income for last year from 2009, which he said indicates the drop in the share price is “unjustified.”
Pacific Rubiales’ shares as of Monday’s close on the Colombian Stock Exchange are down 21% since March 3.
Analysts say the fall in the share price is largely due to a report from the company release last week that indicated new proven reserves increased some 13% last year, while the market expected reserves to jump about 60%.
Pacific Rubiales is the heaviest-weighted share in the Colombian bourse’s main IGBC index. The company has been at the forefront of Colombia’s recent oil boom, which saw production reach an all-time record of 861,000 barrels a day last month. The country aims to reach 1 million barrels a day of oil output by the end of this year.
Pacheco added that part of the reason for the share price decline is that it has risen so much over the past year “that people are taking their profit now.”