Monday, March 23rd, 2026
In an exclusive interview with Valora Analitik on March 20, 2026, Imad Mohsen, global president of Canadian independent Parex Resources, offered one of the most unambiguously positive assessments of Colombia’s investment climate heard from a senior oil executive in years — and one that stands in pointed contrast to the alarm being sounded by domestic sector associations over regulatory uncertainty and unpaid government debts.
Petrobras and Ecopetrol announced on March 18, 2026 the confirmation of a new natural gas discovery in the deep waters of the Colombian Caribbean, with the drilling of the exploratory well Copoazú-1 in Block GUA-OFF-0. The companies stated that “the discovery consolidates the gas province and the hydrocarbon potential in this area, while adding a greater volume of gas to contribute to the country’s energy security.”
Energy and Mines Minister Edwin Palma has acknowledged that cheap Venezuelan gas imports could fundamentally alter the economics of Colombia’s domestic supply plans – potentially undermining the commercial rationale for the offshore Sirius project and curtailing the market for regasification infrastructure.
Three of Ecopetrol’s major labor unions have gone public with sharp criticism of both the company’s strategic direction and the continued tenure of president Ricardo Roa.
Ecopetrol president Ricardo Roa used the company’s 2025 financial results presentation to directly address and reject allegations — circulating from anonymous sources — that Colombia’s state oil company had been deliberately withholding gas injections at fields such as Floreña to manufacture artificial shortages and sustain elevated gas prices.
Frontera Energy’s 2025 annual results, released March 18, 2026, are best understood through the lens of a company in the final stages of a strategic transformation — one that is selling off its Colombian upstream operations and reinventing itself as an infrastructure-focused business anchored by the ODL pipeline and Puerto Bahía port in Cartagena.
The Antonio Ricaurte pipeline — the 225-kilometer infrastructure connecting Lake Maracaibo to Colombia’s La Guajira department — sits at the center of the Petro government’s most ambitious near-term gas supply strategy, but a cascade of technical, legal, and contractual complications make reactivation a far longer and more costly undertaking than official rhetoric suggests.
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