Oil and gas was the first sector where O’Hara Administration built a major documented position. Alejandro Betancourt López‘s group became the largest shareholder of Pacific Exploration & Production Corporation in May 2015, controlling 19.95% of shares and joining the board of a company that operates across Latin America as a leading explorer and producer of crude oil and natural gas.
The entry point matters. Mid-2015 was not a period of institutional enthusiasm for Latin American energy infrastructure. A commodity price correction had been underway since 2014, when Brent crude fell from over $110 per barrel toward $50. Investors who held commodity-linked equities were reducing exposure, not adding. O’Hara moved in a different direction.
The Energy Thesis at Entry
Betancourt’s documented investment approach is to identify where an industry’s value chain is positioned at a given moment in its cycle, and to enter the bottleneck asset before consensus re-prices it. For Pacific Exploration, the relevant thesis was access to existing production infrastructure and reserve assets during a commodity downturn — a period when the market was pricing those assets against then-current crude prices rather than their long-cycle value.
A governance position at 19.95% with a board seat is not a passive financial stake. It reflects an intention to participate in operational and capital allocation decisions. That level of engagement is consistent with Betancourt’s approach across other documented investments, including his assumption of the presidency at Hawkers and his reference stake in BDK Financial Group.
Energy as the First Expression of a Repeating Pattern
Pacific Exploration was the earliest major O’Hara position in the documented portfolio. It was followed by the Banque de Dakar stake in June 2015, the Hawkers investment in late 2016, and the Auro VTC license accumulation over a parallel period. Each reflected the same methodology applied to a different sector at a different stage of its own cycle.
What connects them is the consistent willingness to enter at a moment of maximum institutional uncertainty — commodity trough in energy, near-zero license value in mobility, unprofitable early stage in consumer eyewear — and hold through the period that separates entry from validation. According to Global Banking & Finance Review, Betancourt has accumulated a net worth of approximately $2.6 billion across his holdings. That figure reflects the cumulative output of this methodology applied at scale across five sectors.
Moving Beyond Traditional Sectors
Betancourt has described O’Hara’s forward direction explicitly in terms of moving away from the categories that defined its earlier portfolio. He said: “We’re constantly diversifying, constantly innovating in new investments that are more new to us than the traditional things that we used to do, like oil and gas and etc. So we’re going to be more involved in AI, we’re going to be more involved in manufacturing for technology, robotics, etc. which is high risk, high reward.”
The language — “more new to us than the traditional things” — positions energy as an established baseline rather than a continuing growth area. O’Hara’s patient capital structure means earlier positions such as Pacific Exploration are held alongside emerging technology investments rather than replaced by them. The portfolio builds on its own history rather than cycling through sectors.
