Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026
The Barrancabermeja refinery, Ecopetrol’s flagship processing facility in Santander, has reached its highest crude throughput in twenty years, processing 245,500 bd of crude — a level that has since climbed further to approximately 246,000 bd, according to Milton Lara, the plant’s acting general manager.
Parex Resources, Colombia’s largest independent oil producer, expects its output in the country to grow strongly following its acquisition of Frontera Energy’s Colombian assets — a transaction that will make Parex two to three times larger than any other private operator in the market.
The regasification terminal that Transportadora de Gas Internacional (TGI), a subsidiary of Grupo Energía Bogotá, announced in October 2025 for the Ballena field in La Guajira will not be ready in January 2027 as originally projected — and may now not enter service until early 2028.
Speaking at the Naturgas annual congress in Cartagena, Energy Minister Edwin Palma announced a proposal to implement an open season auction mechanism for viable regasification projects — a market instrument that would allow CREG to assess user demand before infrastructure is built, providing financial viability guarantees and efficient capacity allocation before capital is committed.
Five of Ecopetrol’s nine board members received an extraordinary summons by email on the morning of April 15 and gathered at Casa de Nariño with President Gustavo Petro — a meeting that triggered a sharp dispute between competing accounts of what was discussed and what may come next for Ricardo Roa.
A Corficolombiana research report cited by Bloomberg Línea delivers the starkest assessment yet of Colombia’s gas supply trajectory: production is in freefall, imports are surging to compensate, and the country is becoming dangerously dependent on infrastructure never designed for the role it is now playing.
Ecopetrol acting president Juan Carlos Hurtado confirmed that the company is actively pursuing a US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) license to allow both Ecopetrol and Grupo ISA to import gas from Venezuela and reactivate bilateral energy projects — the clearest public signal yet that the NOC views Venezuela as a near-term operational priority rather than a long-term aspiration.
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