News and AnalysIs for

The Refinería de Cartagena (Reficar) returned to normal operations by March 24, 2026, nine days after an electrical supply failure struck the facility on March 15. Ecopetrol confirmed that all processing units are operating normally and that the supply of refined fuels to the national market was maintained throughout the incident.

The decision to halt the Komodo deepwater well – a joint project between Ecopetrol and Occidental Petroleum in the Colombian Caribbean – did not merely delay an exploration campaign.

President Gustavo Petro announced on March 25, 2026 that Colombia will withdraw from the international investment arbitration system – the framework under which foreign investors can bring disputes against states before private arbitral tribunals rather than national courts – citing the structural bias he argues such tribunals exhibit in favor of private claimants over sovereign governments.

A Constitutional Court ruling issued in October 2025 — Sentence T-390-25 — has sent shockwaves through Colombia’s oil and gas sector by holding Ecopetrol and its logistics subsidiary Cenit responsible for environmental and human rights damages caused by armed group attacks on the Oleoducto Trasandino (OTA), a 300-kilometer crude oil pipeline in Nariño that has been suspended since 2023 and for which no restart date exists.

NG Energy International filed its 2025 annual results on March 30, 2026 — a document that tells two stories simultaneously: a year of operational turbulence absorbed and resolved, and a company that has fundamentally repositioned itself for a materially stronger 2026.

A trade dispute between Colombia and Ecuador is imposing significant operational and cost penalties on oil producers in Putumayo, forcing Ecopetrol and GeoPark to reroute production through longer, more expensive domestic corridors instead of the Sistema de Oleoducto Transecuatoriano (SOTE) that has historically been the basin’s primary export pathway.