News and AnalysIs for

The Unión Sindical Obrera issued a communiqué on May 30 calling on Colombians — and oil and gas workers in particular — to vote in the presidential election with the country’s energy future as their primary consideration.

President Gustavo Petro summoned three Ecopetrol board members — Hildebrando Vélez, Alberto José Merlano, and board chair Ángela María Robledo — to the Casa de Nariño on June 1, according to sources speaking to Valora Analitik.

Colombia’s environmental licensing authority ANLA used a June 1 press release to frame its recent activity on liquefied natural gas infrastructure in explicitly strategic terms: the accumulation of approved and pending regasification projects along the Caribbean coast is the country’s most concrete near-term tool for expanding gas supply, increasing competition, and improving prices for end users.

Colombia’s main oil sector union, the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), launched a 24-hour work stoppage at Ecopetrol on June 2, citing what it described as a complete breakdown in negotiations over a new collective labor agreement.

Three senior voices in Colombia’s energy sector used a La República forum panel on May 29 to deliver a coordinated indictment of current energy policy — and a set of prescriptions the next government will need to act on quickly if a blackout is to be avoided in the second half of the year.

Colombia’s Superintendencia de Sociedades has authorized the creation of priority liens on a portion of Canacol Energy’s Colombian assets, giving the company a formal legal instrument to use those assets as collateral within its ongoing restructuring process.