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Christ Oil (Barrancabermeja - Santander)
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Barrancabermeja is a municipality located in the Colombian department of Santander. It is headquarters of the largest oil refinery in the country, located 100 km from Bucaramanga, along the Magdalena River.

As we said, here is located the biggest oil refinery in Colombia, belonging to the state company Ecopetrol. Much of the city's economy revolves around the petrochemical industry which sits in this county.

The refinery in Barrancabermeja is the country's main refinery, with a total production of 250,000 barrels of fuel daily.

At the time of the Spanish Conquest, in the year 1,536, the governor, Don Pedro Fernandez de Lugo, was intended to discover the headwaters of the Magdalena River without cost or repair efforts.

Gonzalo Jimenez de Quezada was appointed General and chosen by the governor to exit at the forefront of this issue, giving it broad powers and authority to choose their own mates. As we begin this journey found it difficult to walk by wetlands, the sudden assault of indigenous people and the attacks of voracious beasts and insects.

All this is supported only by the prospect of finding a territory rich in wealth, thus alleviating their hardships and made them follow in his stubborn effort.

Having defeated a thousand difficulties, on 12 October 1536, issuing currency river about how far "Barrancas Bermejas", with 27.6 ° C average temperature.

On 6 April 1536 departed on the expedition, carrying under his command 700 infants and 80 knights by the road and in five boats. All of them were experts captains, sailors and excellent tanned famous warriors in the war against the Moors from Spain.

Lator or Latocca, was the name of indigenous today Barrancabermeja, which passed by the river Yuma, today Magdalena River.

The historian Dr. Horace Silver Rodriguez, in his book "The German immigration to the Sovereign State of Santander en el Siglo XIX", brings a quote from Don Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, its General Natural History of the Indies, Islands and Tierra Firme Ocean Sea, which reads:

"Two of the co-Quesada testified that a day ahead of the people of Latorica there is a source of bitumen that is a well and boil it and runs off the ground, and is entering into the mountains, at the foot of the mountains, and is Large quantity and thick liquor. And what the Indians carried their homes and untan with that because you are good bitumen to remove fatigue and strengthen the legs: and this black liquor and smell of fish and worse, the use thereof Christians to apply their pitch to the brig. "

Subsequently one of the pioneers of Independence, Pedro Fermin Vargas, a native of Cepitá, warned the importance and necessity of commercial exploitation of this "pitch or splashing" to "preserve the boats of the joke."

Geo Von Lengerke, sent to Berlin, Germany, the first samples of oil and asphalt obtained on the site of Infantas. Then Don Jose Joaquin Bohórquez, an employee in the roads built Lengerke, Zapatoca Puerto Santander, discovered deposits of Barrancabermeja, which are appropriated Mr de Mar and were the beginning of the large Colombian Oil Company, Ecopetrol.

As a tribute to the oil industry and a sign of gratitude to God, so this gives us valuable land has been erected this monument called the Christ tanker in the swamp Miramar, which is adjacent to the refinery:

Opening date: December 7, 1995

Total weight: It is given in 46 tons.

Height in meters: His exact height from its base until its final structure is 26 meters.

Downloading Water: It has a pump discharge 850 gallons per minute.