News and AnalysIs for

Ricardo Roa’s leave from Ecopetrol expires July 27^th and under his contract he would legally return as company president on July 28^th – just ten days before the August 7^th inauguration of Abelardo de la Espriella, who has called him a thief and a criminal and whose government’s stated first act is to convene an extraordinary shareholders meeting to replace him.

Brazil’s securities regulator CVM handed Ecopetrol a procedural victory on July 15^th, ruling in favor of Ecopetrol Investimentos do Brasil in the administrative appeal that had kept the Brava Energía tender offer suspended since June 19^th.

The Energy Institute took over production of the annual Statistical Review of World Energy which BP had produced for decades. This was, in fact, the 75^th edition. We find it interesting for the tables and tables of energy data cut every which way that can produce thought-provoking graphs.

Colombia’s total exports reached US$5.193B in May 2026, a 19.2% year-on-year increase, capping a strong January-May period in which cumulative export revenue hit US$23.588B – up 15.4% over the same period in 2025.

With less than a month until his August 7^th inauguration, president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella’s economic team completed a high-level Washington mission on July 15^th, securing a concrete output from its IDB meeting: the launch of “Colombia Crece,” a joint investment attraction strategy embedded within the IDB Group’s regional LAC Crece initiative.

Vice president-elect José Manuel Restrepo met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department on July 15 for a 45-minute bilateral meeting that both sides described as the opening of a new chapter in Colombia-US relations, one in which energy and hydrocarbons figured as a central substantive thread beneath the diplomatic framing.

Writing in Portafolio, Sylvia Escovar – former president of Terpel and current chair of the GeoPark board – published a pointed opinion piece framing the question of who leads Ecopetrol not as a personnel decision but as an institutional one with consequences for the entire country.

Colombia’s natural gas supply picture has deteriorated sharply since the start of 2026.

Colombia’s Ministry of Finance published a detailed diagnosis of the hydrocarbon sector’s structural deterioration in its Medium-Term Fiscal Framework that frames the depth of the challenge facing the incoming De la Espriella administration.

The Canacol-Cerro Matoso dispute has entered a new phase, with court-appointed monitor KPMG formally intervening to contest the ferronickel producer’s characterization of the gas supply restrictions, while simultaneously urging both parties to reach a commercially viable new contract before the situation escalates further.