Thursday, August 13th, 2026
In an El Heraldo opinion column, Aquiles Mercado argues that global energy security has moved to the center of IMF and World Bank discussions, with the Iran conflict standing as the top geopolitical risk to oil markets — a blocked Strait of Hormuz or disrupted production, he writes, could create a shortage larger than the pandemic’s and reignite inflationary pressure.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council announced the selection of Diego Mesa Puyo, Colombia’s former Minister of Energy and Mines, as the fund family’s next CEO and Chairperson, for an initial four-year term aligned with the GEF-9 funding period.
Labor productivity across Latin America has stagnated for decades, widening the region’s gap with developed economies, according to a new Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) report titled “Making Labor Markets Work: Improving Productivity and Worker Well-Being in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Gran Tierra reported second-quarter 2026 net income of US$25 million, a sharp swing from a US$119 million net loss in Q1, on total production of 41,501 boed and Adjusted EBITDA of US$85 million.
President Abelardo De la Espriella used his first address as president, delivered from Batallón Pichincha in Cali, to declare that recovering Ecopetrol will be an absolute priority of his administration, alongside reactivating hydrocarbons exploration and authorizing fracking under environmental standards.
Cerro Matoso, Colombia’s ferronickel producer in Córdoba, cut its operations 50% indefinitely as of August 4, after Canacol Energy continued restricting gas deliveries to below 4,000 MBTUD — less than a quarter of the contracted volume.
An extensive El Espectador retrospective, drawing on interviews with more than 10 sector figures, delivers a mixed verdict on the outgoing Petro government’s hydrocarbons record – industry groups call it negative, while the government points to democratic legitimacy for its choices.
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