The Energy Mining Planning Unit (UPME) has updated its interim natural gas plan and warned that even though there are more years of natural gas reserves in the country than those of crude, this fuel has more worrisome consequences if supply becomes scarce. The UPME reinforced plans for importing.
An attempt by congressional members to place a tax on natural gas brought about a quick rejection from the Colombian Natural Gas Association (Naturgas). Lawmakers appear to have backed down, but it raises a number of questions as to the tax strategy for fossil fuels.
Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) budgeted over CoP$10B for projects to improve the conditions and quality of life in communities of Meta, Casanare and Vichada. These and other Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects in our periodic summary.
With the recovery of oil prices, GeoPark (NYSE:GPRK), which has been in the country for four years, has positive prospects for 2017.
A port investment group (PIO SAS), is pushing forward to build Colombia’s second regasification plant called Puerto Solo, which would be located in Buenaventura, following the inauguration of Colombia’s first regasification plant Puerto Cayo in Cartagena.
The National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) expects oil price improvements to give a boost to exploration activities in 2017, and that in Colombia there will be more than 40 exploratory wells next year.
The USO is the union for Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) workers and, perhaps surprisingly, one of the loudest voices against the oil industry and the ‘evil multinationals’ who dare to operate in Colombia.
The drop in crude oil production during 3Q16 was the steepest quarter-over-quarter drop since 4Q01, well before anyone in the Colombian government thought about transforming the industry.
Oxy (NYSE:OXY) has restarted production at the Caño Limon field after halting the operation for more than a week following an escalation of attacks on the Coveñas/Caño Limon pipeline by the ELN guerrilla.
The USO said that by appointing Luis Guillermo Vélez Atehortúa as head of Ecopetrol’s health administration, Juan Carlos Echeverry made a ‘tactical’ move to begin to diminish the guarantees of the 70.000 users of the health system, embodied in the collective labor agreement.