Ricardo Markous
He was thinking about retiring when he was offered the top position at the oil company. His path combines engineering, international training and projects in three countries.
When he was offered the role of CEO of Tecpetrol, Ricardo Markous was already thinking about retirement. He accepted, and since April 1, 2021, he has led Grupo Techint’s oil arm, a company where he has spent 45 years and where he went through almost every stage of his career. “Sometimes the path surprises you and can result in great opportunities,” he summarized about that turn.
His arrival at the top closed a journey that began far from oil. Markous studied civil engineering at the University of Buenos Aires, with a focus on hydraulics, because he wanted to build dams: he liked the mountains. He never built one. Instead, he worked at CONICET’s ocean energy center and, in 1980, joined the nuclear area of Techint Engineering and Construction.
Training between MIT and Stanford
The company bet early on his training. In 1982, he studied at MIT and, when the Nuclear Plan was discontinued in 1987, the group sent him to pursue a master’s degree in Management at Stanford. He returned in the early 1990s, amid the wave of privatizations, and joined the gas business through the expansion of the Transportadora de Gas del Norte (TGN) network.
That was the beginning of a stage he describes as fascinating. After a period at Tecgas —the unit that operated TGN and merged with Tecpetrol in 1999—, he took on increasing responsibilities until he became head of business development, gas & power and commercialization for the company in Argentina in 2005.
The projects that shaped him as an executive
Before taking over general management, Markous was in charge of Camisea, in Peru, the project he remembers as the most enjoyable of his career. The work involved building two pipelines that cross the jungle, reach an altitude of 4,800 meters and descend toward the sea, with 6,000 people working on the project. It also left him with a lesson about public exposure: facing the ruptures he had to address in the Peruvian press, he learned that a company can keep a low profile, but when necessary, it must show up and explain things transparently.
From that experience, he also draws a lesson about decisions that do not turn out as expected. Camisea was eventually sold, something he did not agree with. “When one door closes, another opens,” he said: with those funds, the company was able to develop Fortín de Piedra.
The succession of Ormachea
Markous replaced Carlos Ormachea, who led Tecpetrol for 17 years and moved on to chair the board. When announcing the transition, Ormachea described him as a leader with deep knowledge of the energy market, who had participated in the company’s most important projects in Argentina, Mexico and Peru. The continuity was presented without disruption: the new CEO inherited a consolidated team and the gas asset that had transformed the business.
Leadership supported by the team
Asked about his style, Markous insists on collective work and on passing that approach on to new generations. He advises those starting out to share knowledge, dare to question and know how to recognize mistakes: “raise your hand and say, ‘I was wrong’; you learn a lot from that.” He argues that the “extra mile” is what allows people to grow.
That culture translated into a concrete result that he considers one of the achievements of his management. After the accidents the company went through in the past, Tecpetrol reinforced, together with its staff and contractors, a safety culture built from the field. Today, according to Markous, the company shows a safety rate comparable to that of top-tier international oil companies, the kind of data through which he measures the direction he gave to the company’s leadership.
