News and AnalysIs for

As reported by newspaper El Nuevo Siglo, Orlando Cabrales, president of the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), said that the agency will supervise the oil production of the companies in the country. At present, this work is done by the Ministry of Mines and Energy. “What we want is move forward with a much more automated control, much more systematic. It is now manual”, he explained, and he added: “We have to determine how much the production is.”

The USO says that demonstrations continue in the region of Arauca. We reported on this news item last week. At that time the mayor of Arauca reported that the siege of Caño Limón had been lifted. This news item suggests the USO have taken the demonstrations on the road to other local towns. Gasoline distributor Terpel, which recently announced it was going for a bond issue, receives the usual USO castigation for the sin of outsourcing and Ecopetrol decides to give more jobs to local people in Barrancabermeja.

Incidents were down considerably again this week to 33 a level not seen since the ceasefire period back in December but there were fresh direct attacks on pipelines. Our 4-week Moving Average was down significantly and it now sits at 44 incidents per week closer to what amounts to the long-term average.

Talks resumed in Havana, but the dynamic is security at home. The FARC continue to enrage citizens through terrorism like school bombings but say such acts are the government’s fault because it refuses to consider a bi-lateral truce. The truce concept received a boost when long-time politician and commentator Alvaro Leyva suggested a ceasefire with international supervision might work. But he did not seem to be suggesting that the UN “blue helmets” be brought in but rather that selected celebrities and other worthies do the supervision. Considering the vast territory to be covered, that seems unfeasible.

As reported by RCN Radio, inhabitants of Guaduas (Cundinamarca) complain to the government about the delay in granting environmental licenses for the construction of a section of the Ruta del Sol which connects Guaduas to the municipality of Villeta. They note that an oil company has had a license to operate for more than 13 years in the area.

Business newspaper Portafolio reported that President Juan Manuel Santos said the government appointed six delegates of the National Planning Department (DNP) to decentralize this entity and establish direct contact with governors and mayors. The goal is to accelerate implementation of royalty-financed projects. The governors and mayors may think this is not enough.

Mauricio Cardenas, currently Finance Minister but until September 2012 Minister of Mines and Energy, closed the International Forum on Hydrocarbons 2013. He gave the finance department’s twist on the industry present and future and it gave the audience a somewhat different perspective. It was a generally positive speech, welcome in these difficult days.

Ecopetrol issued a brief press release with its year-end 2012 reserve figures. After rising 10% in each of the previous two years, Ecopetrol only managed a 1% increase in reserves in 2012. Revisions played an important role, representing 45Mboe or 17.5% of the additions. Enhanced recovery contributed 26% leaving new discoveries and extensions with 57% of the additions. In this early release of the numbers, the company did not separate Colombian from non-Colombian reserves. It only said that 95% came from the “mothership” versus 5% for subsidiaries which include Colombian subsidiaries like Hocol and Equion. Considering the importance the government puts on reserves and the importance of Ecopetrol to overall statistics, this result has to be a disappointment.

Recently the press picked up a statistic that none of the exploratory wells drilled in 2012 had entered into production. We did not publish the story because we knew there had been announcements of wells entering production or at least getting to the stage of production. Now National Hydrocarbons Agency head Orlando Cabrales has given the statistics seen in the above chart. This was part of an excellent presentation he made to the International Forum on Hydrocarbons 2103 jointly organized by Colombia’s best business school CESA and the Alberta School of Business.

Business magazine Dinero reports that the Comptroller General found irregularities in royalties’ resource management. According to a Comptroller’s report there are US$260Mn at risk in the Caribbean, Central East, Coffee Region, Llanos, Pacific and Central South regions, and projects from the National Royalty Fund in liquidation, for unfinished projects and for projects that do not work or have overruns.