News and AnalysIs for

This week the USO reported on its national assembly and its plans to create an occupational health department. More important is a news item on hearings in Villavicencio on the social and environmental impacts of the mining and hydrocarbons sectors in the department of Meta. A left-wing senator, Alexander López Maya told the hearing that working conditions in Puerto Gaitan were typical of a concentration camp. That’s strange considering that Pacific Rubiales told a conference on sustainable communities and petroleum last Friday that it had no community or labor relations issues in Puerto Gaitan. Although the truth is no doubt somewhere between zero and the Gulag archipelago, we are inclined to think it very much closer to the company’s point of view than one reported by the USO.

National business magazine Dinero has finally recognized the challenges facing the industry. The article points out that while the oil industry is one of the strongest in the country, there has been no major oil discovery recently, terrorist attacks on pipelines continue, there are delays with the environmental licensing (as we recently reported) and strikes and shut-ins in the oil fields.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) announced that oil production in November was 970,632 bpd, although the figure had been reported even before the end of the month (which should raise questions about how it is calculated).

The NGO Transparency International released its Corruption Perceptions Index 2012. The index scores countries on a scale from 0 to 100 where a 0 score indicates that a country is very corrupt and a 100 score indicates that it is very clean. None of the 176 countries included in the index got a perfect score.The graph here shows the ranking of all the countries in the study with lower ranked being better.

With so much doom and gloom around the Colombian hydrocarbons industry it’s nice to celebrate some good news. The graph shows MinMinas reported gross production (before royalties and working interest) the Las Maracas field and Petroamerica’s recently reported November figure. Production is up over 500% since July.

In our Inner Circle Exclusive Monthly Report for November we published MinDefensa figures that showed hydrocarbons infrastructure attacks were down to 196 in 2011 from 917 in 2002. The graph shows the importance of picking your measurement dates to make your point. The Defense Minister implied (but did not say) that there had been a steady decline from 2002 to 2011. We obtained this data for attacks on Ecopetrol and they clearly show a rather dramatic increase since 2010 – the start of the Santos presidency – from about 30 during the later years of Uribe’s second term to 150 as of the end of October 2012.

Last Friday, November 30, 2012 the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) presented its “Rendering of Accounts”, a kind of public performance review in which citizens are invited to listen and openly question and criticize if they wish. The session lasted about four hours and covered a wide range of the agency’s activities. Hydrocarbons Colombia was there and we noted the following items (with our commentary).

MinHacienda Mauricio Cardenas announced that the government intends to introduce three amendments to royalty budget management. The budget for the next two years totals CoP$17.7 billion (US$9.7B). The changes are designed to tighten control on projects even further and to make royalty funding available to the central government for capital projects. The changes do not address community frustration over the changes to the system already introduced this year. We comment on the changes and the royalty system in general.

Villavicencio residents are upset about all things hydrocarbons it seems. They marched on city hall to complain about Ecopetrol and on the Llanogas distribution company offices to protest high prices. These are not isolated incidents in the same week. They would seem to be fomented by community leaders for broader political purposes, but which tap into a vein of discontent.

The MinMinas press report was rather muted and full of reminders that the figures were preliminary etc. There was no mention of the fact that this was in fact a milestone for Colombian oil production – the highest month on record. Likewise the 1Mbpd goal was nowhere to be seen in the text. It must be the difference in personality between Minister Renjifo and ex-Minister Cardenas.