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The incoming De la Espriella government has made enabling unconventional hydrocarbon extraction one of its most explicit energy policy commitments and the outgoing Petro government has moved to make that path as legally difficult as possible with fewer than three weeks left in office.

Ecopetrol disclosed on July 17 that an unidentified external actor successfully accessed its cloud storage environments without authorization, downloading data associated with approximately 3,300 user accounts across 15 companies within the Ecopetrol Group.

Campo Rubiales completed a decade of direct operation under Ecopetrol on July 3^rd, 2026 – marked from the moment in July 2016 when the state oil company assumed control of the field following the expiry of the operating contract held by Pacific Rubiales, now Frontera Energy.

President Gustavo Petro requested and received the resignation of Mines and Energy Minister Edwin Palma on July 17^th, placing ANH president Pablo Yesid Fajardo in temporary charge of the ministry with just over three weeks left in the government.

Ricardo Roa’s leave from Ecopetrol expires July 27^th and under his contract he would legally return as company president on July 28^th – just ten days before the August 7^th inauguration of Abelardo de la Espriella, who has called him a thief and a criminal and whose government’s stated first act is to convene an extraordinary shareholders meeting to replace him.

Brazil’s securities regulator CVM handed Ecopetrol a procedural victory on July 15^th, ruling in favor of Ecopetrol Investimentos do Brasil in the administrative appeal that had kept the Brava Energía tender offer suspended since June 19^th.