Tuesday, July 14th, 2026
A July 4th Semana analysis by its economics desk crystallizes the three converging energy emergencies that will define the de la Espriella administration’s first weeks: El Niño, the Canacol insolvency, and Air-e’s paralysis, each serious on its own, and compounding when combined.
President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella named María Nohemí Arboleda Arango as Minister of Mines and Energy on July 13, filling the one of the last major cabinet vacancies and the portfolio most consequential for Colombia’s energy supply crisis.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy used its July 9 four-year management balance to deliver a pointed political message to the incoming De la Espriella administration: suspending the energy sector transition handover process at the precise moment Colombia is preparing for an El Niño episode is, in the ministry’s words, “profoundly irresponsible.”
Venezuela’s interim government published sweeping new petroleum sector regulations on July 9, following up on changes to the petroleum law introduced in recent months.
Tomás de la Calle is back, this time looking at the country’s declining gas reserves and wondering about the UPME’s role in getting us to here … and getting us back to self-sufficiency.
The conventional explanation for Latin America’s electric vehicle boom, as Bloomberg Línea documented for Uruguay this month, is straightforward: when gasoline costs US$7.60 a gallon – the highest in the region – the economics of switching to electric become irresistible.
The Alberta court’s June 24th authorization for Canacol to void its gas contracts has generated a widening circle of sector responses that go beyond the immediate Cerro Matoso crisis, touching distribution companies, the coal sector, industrial associations, and legal scholars, all of whom converged on a single point: the decisive chapter will be written not in Calgary but in Bogotá.
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