The opposition to fracking in Colombia has been simmering for some time, but reached a new level last week after Santander’s Departmental Assembly unanimously voted against the technique in their territory.
Iván Cortés, the manager of Llanopetrol, the controversial firm created by former Meta Governor Alan Jara to build a refinery in the department, took to the press to defend the project, and assured that it is no white elephant.
A work team of experts from the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) attended the Cesar Department Assembly to encourage dialogue and address concerns from local authorities.
The first warnings that Ecopetrol’s (NYSE:EC) honeymoon after taking over the Rubiales field could be coming to a close have emerged. Community groups are complaining that few of the NOC’s contractors have socialized their projects with locals, and want a greater focus on local hiring.
Yet another reader question and yet another off-the-cuff answer led to some introspection and some inspection of the facts. Fuel consumption – as measured by Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) – has grown by 6.4% annually since 2008.
The president of the association of fuel stations Fedispetrol Álvaro Younes said that contrary to what the government’s formula has yielded, fuel prices for both gasoline and diesel should be falling, and be at least CoP$300-400 (US$0.09-0.12) less per gallon.
The Minister of Finance (MinHacienda) Mauricio Cárdenas has his eyes on royalty savings, and is urging lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow the government to use the CoP$10T (US$3.25B) that had been set aside from royalty payments. This and other royalty-related stories in our periodic summary.
Like last year and the year before that, July oil prices finished in negative territory with respect to June. Not a great start for the third quarter.
We do not want to fill up HCC with social conflict articles but that is what is getting published. And looking at some recent anti-oil articles which have prominent placement in national newspapers, it looks like the industry is just letting go with the Colombian public.
The Santander Departmental Assembly voted to reject fracking techniques and the USO was there to mark the event.
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