News and AnalysIs for

The National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) held its annual rendering of accounts and said that it has morphed the agency into a service-orientated entity designed to bridge the gap between communities and the industry, while protecting the environment, development, production and investment. We also attended a breakfast meeting which, in a shorter period of time, went through a longer and more technical presentation oriented to the oil industry press and certain economics reporters from the popular press.

Students, teachers and administrators in Barracabermeja say more OCAD support is needed for education infrastructure, as current programs do not address the gaps. This and other royalty related stories in our periodic roundup.

The oil prices crisis has caused a reduction of 40,000 jobs in the Colombian labor market, according to the study “Guide for the 2015 labor market” performed by Hays and EY. The restructuring of the sector has reached 63% in the first nine months of the year, the study says.

Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) will begin work on providing gas services to 30,000 Colombian families in January 2016, meanwhile in Putumayo a community warns strikes could come over local hiring quotas. These and other stories on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in our periodic summary.

A fund created in the tax reform last year which looks to guarantee stable fuel prices has been declared unconstitutional by Colombia’s Constitutional Court. The transportation industry says this will benefit consumers, while the government says it will study its options.

The Impala port project in Barrancabermeja, Santander on the Magdalena River will reach full operation in the second quarter of 2016. The operator, Swiss firm Impala Terminals says the terminal is already using the Magdalena River to transport oil and is at 30% of full capacity.

Cesar Loza has been voted in as the new president of the USO, and promised an action plan focused on defending the Barrancabermeja Refinery modernization project, observing the transition of the Rubiales Field and fighting against worker layoffs in the sector, among other objectives.

At this time of year, companies are in the closing stages of their 2016 planning. Considering the time frame of most oil and gas investments, one input is very long-term forecasts of overall demand, at least implicitly as companies try to look at long-term prices.

The headline on Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) results was that it made money while the rest of the industry lost. Inside Colombia, the comparison is unfair because it has no rivals with the same breadth and as the above graph shows, the Transport sector save the day.

The battle over oil prices is a battle over production with Saudi Arabia saying it wants to regain US market share lost to higher-cost shale oil. But that is light oil and US refineries still need a significant supply of heavy crude due to the configuration of their plants. The graph shows that the US represents an increasing share of Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) exports, at least over the last six quarters.