* State oil firm head replaces Pinto * Part of President Correa's wide cabinet reshuffle
(Adds details) By Santiago Silva QUITO, April 21 (Reuters) - The head of state-run oil
company Petroamazonas, Wilson Pastor, said on Wednesday he
would be the next energy minister of Ecuador, which has the
rotating presidency of OPEC this year. "I've been confirmed," Pastor told Reuters. President Rafael Correa on Tuesday removed Germanico Pinto
from the post in a cabinet reshuffle that also cost the
country's finance minister her job. [ID:nN20241025] The switch comes as the government threatens to take over
the operations of private petroleum companies unless they sign
new contracts favoring the state. [ID:nN20116124]
Correa had already replaced nine ministers this month after telling the
whole cabinet to submit resignation letters. The reshuffle is not expected to lead to any significant
changes in Ecuador's state-centric policies. Pinto was OPEC chief, a post that rotates on an annual
basis among member countries. The position is mostly symbolic
and lacks significant policy-making weight. Pastor will become
head of OPEC when he is sworn in. Correa, a European-trained economist, took office in
January 2007 and his popularity rating rose above 70 percent in
his first years as he redistributed wealth to the poor and took
a tough stance against foreign investors. But his ratings have sunk below 50 percent since, largely
because of a slow economy as the country's oil revenues were
battered by the global economic slump and a fall in petroleum
demand. The country is making sluggish progress on renegotiating
oil contracts aimed at ending profit-sharing deals with foreign
companies and turning the firms into service providers. Ecuador wants the new contracts as a way of increasing
revenue. The country has been cut off from the international
capital markets since 2008, when it declared $3.2 billion in
global bonds "illegitimate" and defaulted on the obligations.
(Reporting by Santiago Silva; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and
Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Walter Bagley)
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