Monday, August 24th, 2026
The Colombian peso closed Wednesday, August 19 at CoP$3,039 to the dollar, its strongest level since 2018, with the year-to-date decline in the exchange rate now exceeding 17.5%, roughly CoP$658 less per dollar than where the year began (~CoP$3,757).
Aquiles Mercado opens his El Heraldo column with the etymology of a “leonine contract” – from Aesop’s fable of the lion who partners with others to hunt, then keeps the whole spoils – to argue that Colombia’s high LNG import prices aren’t unfair or predatory, but simply the market pricing a scarce good controlled by whoever sells it.
Ecopetrol’s own board has assumed for months that Sirius, the Caribbean gas megaproject, will likely slip a year past its publicly stated 2030 start date to 2031. When did they plan to tell us?
Fitch Ratings will be watching whether Colombia’s new government succeeds in reviving hydrocarbons exploration and lifting production, according to Richard Francis, co-director of Fitch’s Latin America Sovereign Ratings group.
Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development swore in its new leadership team on August 13, including Sergio Arturo Piñeros Botero as director of the Agencia Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (ANLA) — the agency responsible for environmental licensing of major hydrocarbons projects, from offshore exploration wells to pipeline infrastructure like SPEC’s recent capacity expansion.
Ecopetrol’s gas sales volume fell 22.1% in the second quarter of 2026, with gas now representing just 6.9% of the group’s total sales — down sharply from 10.6% in 2Q22, when Gustavo Petro took office.
Argentina has become Latin America’s benchmark for unconventional hydrocarbons development, and Colombia is now looking to that experience as it moves toward authorizing fracking under President Abelardo De la Espriella.
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