OUR LIFE IN QUITO

WE WERE FOUR THEN AND EXPECTING
THE FIFTH MEMBER OF OUR FAMILY


Our life in Quito continued to be very pleasant and full of social activities within our own group of friends; we all had young families with common interests; children of the same age, with very similar economic and social backgrounds. Our children were happily growing within a social community which in fact was our extended family. We were surprised at our own lack of “homesickness” regarding our previous life in Guayaquil. There are many explanations for that: First and foremost, our lives in Guayaquil were basically around the “clan concept” of the family, which somehow restricted our social circle; we felt, therefore, more “independent” to make our own decisions without the intervention of the father or the mother, and, of course, we were away from our mothers in law! (what else can you ask?), our young children started to go to school almost simultaneously, they attended “top notch” private schools, as our incomes allowed, an indication that we were in fact going up in the social scale.



WE WERE A SOLID, UNITED GROUP OF
FAMILIES FROM GUAYAQUIL, LIVING IN QUITO


There was no weekend when we wouldn’t have met to play cards, to pick nick, to dance or just to listen and sing ourselves the romantic music of Julio Jaramillo, the famous Guayaquil singer, idol of millions of Ecuadorians (and Latin Americans) in those days. We loved our Quito life but we continued to love our past life (without missing it) in Guayaquil. We used to get together especially to celebrate the civic Guayaquil holidays, and we even lined up to sing the Guayaquil Hymn on the 9th of October, the Guayaquil Independence Day.

Back in Quito from the Milano fiasco, the instructions I received from my bosses were to go to Salt Lake City and start running the numbers for the construction of a gas pipeline from the Santa Clara Island (offshore the city of Machala in Southern Ecuador), to Guayaquil, since the company had decided to make a serious alternative proposal to the government of Ecuador. The alternative project consisted of producing and transporting the gas from the Santa Clara Field to Guayaquil (a distance of about 100 miles (30 miles underwater), to supply gas to the Guayaquil power plants, which at the time were fueled with bunker, a gasoline production byproduct. The beauty of this alternative was that Ecuador would free a considerable volume of oil for export, at a time when oil was being sold at a reasonably good price in the international markets, while at the same time the city of Guayaquil would benefit from the extraction of the gas in the Gulf, which otherwise would continue to be underground. The proposal also contemplated the possibility of supplying gas to all new areas of the city of Guayaquil for which a home delivered gas distribution system could be built. I was the man in charge of doing the numbers in coordination with the Northwest technicians and lawyers from Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Quito and Guayaquil. The Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City became my new domicile for several months.
At the beginning of 1978, a full proposal for the production of gas out of the Santa Clara Field, and the construction of the gas pipeline to Guayaquil, backed by technical, financial and economic data was delivered to the Ministry of Natural Resources and to CEPE. The proposal was a serious alternative presented by Northwest in its intent to go ahead with the production of gas in the Gulf of Guayaquil, given the economically unjustifiable plan to produce ammonia and urea as originally planned.

In the first quarter of 1978, the Ministry of Natural Resources and CEPE communicated to Northwest that they did not agree with the proposed alternative. Both agencies insisted that Northwest should fulfill its commitment as written in the contract or “face the consequences”. At this point we were facing a complete deadlock. Seeing no point in continuing the negotiations, northwest officially announced to the two government agencies that it would rather pay the 1. 6 million dollars penalty contemplated in the contract and withdraw from the country, than invest over $300 million in the Industrial project that according to its projections would not be economically feasible.

Neither CEPE nor the Government of Ecuador had realized, to that point, that Northwest was dead serious about the proposal alternative and implicitly about facing the consequences for nor building the industrial complex the military government saw as so important for its political interest. The dice had been thrown on the table, Northwest would leave the country and therefore there would be no grandiose industrial project to calm down the political waves in Guayaquil. When the above happened, it was obvious that unless Northwest reversed its decision (which was totally unlikely), I would soon be without a job.




WHILE IN QUITO, OUR CHILDREN ENJOYED
FREQUENT VISITS FROM MY FATHER. THEY
LOVED HIM VERY MUCH




Glen Nelle, a great Gentleman, a Texan, and oilman of the guard, was the Northwest head of the Ecuadorian project, he approached me and asked me to stay during the process of dissolution of the contract, which he thought it would take between six month and a year, which I accepted, but, I told him that in the meantime, I would start looking for a job, a fact that was more that fine with him.

By August, 1978, the process of dissolution of the Northwest branch in Ecuador started; I personally delivered to the treasurer of CEPE an envelope containing the letter with a Citibank’s certificate check for 1.6 million dollars made to CEPE for the penalty for “not compliance” with the contract for the Exploration and Exploitation of Gas in the Gulf of Guayaquil. The process had started its countdown.

In September 1978, an international headhunter based in Miami approached me by phone; he had heard about me from his own sources of information, he knew I would be soon available in the job market and wanted to have a meeting with me within the next three to four weeks. Given the circumstances, I accepted the meeting. As we met, I knew this man was very well informed about me and my professional credentials, in fact, I had to answer only a very few questions about myself, he knew almost everything relevant to this interview. He had been hired to find the man to fill a very high ranking position in the then largest and very prestigious Industrial Bank in Ecuador, COFIEC. The position was for a VP in charge of the Finance area, but the emphasis would be on local “funding”, which appeared to be the bank’s Achilles heel in those days. Two weeks after I was sitting in front of the CEO and founder of the bank, a man whose resume was so impressive, the only thing missing in it was to have been the President of the Country. His name: Dr. Jose Antonio Correa.

My interview with Correa went very well, it lasted for about two hours and we talked about everything and anything, from politics to literature, the economy, labor to tax laws, from Homer the Greek, to Victor Hugo the great French, to Dostoevsky, passing through Cervantes and his Don Quixote. He was a man with an impressive universal culture. Interestingly enough, we didn’t talk much about banking, an area my experience was nil at. At the end of this interview he told me he was so impressed he wanted me to let him know when I would be able to start with his bank.

We hadn’t even talked much about the job itself. Correa said he had no question in his mind about the fact that I was qualified for the job, and that I would be more than satisfied with the compensation package he was offering. He said he had been looking for someone for this job for quite some time and that now that he had finally found “the man for the job”, he was not about to let him go. The compensation package, he said would be much to my satisfaction. My answer was not what he expected to hear, I told him I would not be available until after at least four months as I first had to finish my job with Northwest, something I believed it would take at least that time. Correa didn’t blink, he said “economista” (economist, as he started to call me for my degree in Economics), “I will wait for you for as long as it takes”.

Returning from my interview to my Northwest office, I immediately called Glen Nelle my boss in Texas and told him about it. Glen was very happy to hear what I had to say, he congratulated me and said “Rafael, for all that I know, you can go ahead and take that new job whenever you want, I will still keep you in our payroll for as long as it takes to complete the paperwork for the dissolution of our company down there, I just need you to keep an eye on our things so they don’t get stalled, and, in the meantime you can have the COFIEC job too”, and added “we will try not to interfere with your new job’s responsibilities, just keep your Northwest secretary and messenger in the payroll so they are ready all the time to do what they need to do”.





WHILE LIVING IN QUITO WE USED TO
GO TO THE BEACH QUITE FREQUENTLY



That was something I really did not expect, frankly, I was appalled, and I almost couldn’t believe what I had just heard from Glen Nelle, but it was true, it was amazingly true. Now I had to talk to Dr. Correa and get his view on what Glen had just suggested.

In my next posting: COFIEC, THE WORLD OF BANKING