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Ecopetrol has unveiled a number of projects being carried out jointly with the state training agency Sena, while Hocol detailed its social investments and local goods and services spending in Meta and surrounding areas. These and other stories in our periodic roundup of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects.

While Caribbean offshore blocks have received attention and been the site of recent discoveries, Pacific blocks have failed to gain the same interest and results. Now the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) is looking to hold a competitive process in 2016 to find operators.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) is preparing another set of regulatory changes, Agreement 05, which builds on past adjustments designed to make the sector more flexible in the new price scenario. This implements the change to directly assign blocks and could also include even more benefits for offshore contracts.

Led by the Casanare Chamber of Commerce (CCC), 12 business leaders from the local Oil & Gas Services Cluster participated in a trade mission to the United States to explore new markets and make business ties in hopes of stimulating their business.

In early 2013, Naturgas’ Eduardo Pizano and the ANDI’s then VP of Mining, Oil and Energy, Santiago Angel Urdinola staged a very public battle over whether Colombia had or did not have sufficient gas reserves to last into the next decade.

MinMinas announced gasoline and diesel prices this past week and as expected they went down. Also as expected, the truckers association and other groups thought they should have gone down further.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy (MinMinas) announced a decree that formalizes a move to make tax free zones for offshore production blocks, and also announced tax benefits for renewable energy.

Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) continues to analyze its association contracts which are about to expire, and says that if it bolsters the company’s financial standing, it could repeat its decision made at the Rubiales-Piri and revert contracts. Around 45 association contracts between 2015-2041 could be reviewed.

Emboldened by the recent decision for Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) to directly operate the Rubiales field, the USO has now taken direct issue with the NOC president Juan Carlos Echeverry, who the union claims is dismantling the company to be privatized and targeting workers in favor of multinationals.

Last week we tweeted an article from NGO CERAC with a graph showing that, since the last truce, most combats between the guerrilla and the Armed Forces were initiated by the Armed Forces. This data was seized upon by the Farc as evidence to support their view that the truce should be bilateral, a position rapidly rejected, at least by the Defense Minister.