MinMinas recently released the country’s reserve estimates for crude oil and natural gas for YE2013. The biggest questions are around sustainability for gas.
The departments of Arauca, Norte de Santander and Putumayo have felt the brunt of guerrilla attacks in 2014. As of April 28th, there have been 39 attacks on those departments, while Casanare and Meta face the greatest effect of social conflicts.
Gran Tierra Energy (TSX:GTE) kept its production in Colombia and other markets in South America relatively flat in the first quarter 2014 compared to last year despite pipeline complications and a dependence on trucks. The average realized price took a hit though, and both revenues and profits for the firm slipped.
Ecopetrol has started this year’s process to hire ground transportation, in Meta the governor says a special route will be designated for tankers and Huila-Putumayo leaders met to discuss transportation issues. Meanwhile a number of accidents and spills caused delays in Casanare and made headlines.
The use of oil, gas and minerals finder technology (OFT) which harnesses satellite imagery to identify mineral content has been in Colombia for around three years, but technology suppliers say that it is only recently gaining interest for exploration.
In order for Colombia to achieve self- sufficiency for its own oil supply, an important and dramatic discovery of reserves must happen this decade, otherwise keeping along current trends the reserves logged would not supply the country past 2018, according to a government report.
Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) officials said during its first quarter 2014 conference call that crews working on the Caño Lion-Coveñas pipeline should have it running five days after starting work, and gave estimates as how many barrels of crude it loses everyday due to attacks.
Members of the USO national chapter held a meeting with Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) to discuss the modernization of the Barrancabermeja Refinery, and called for work to start immediately.
Incidents near areas of interest to the oil and gas industry were down to 33, below recent but above long-term averages. Non-Armed-Forces-reported incidents were just about average in percentage terms and in absolute terms. This is our indicator of increased guerrilla-initiated activity. Our 4-week Moving Average incident count was down correspondingly at 34.0 and the 52 week average was stable at 31.3 incidents per week.
(Due to technical reasons beyond our control, we were unable to publish the usual Heavy Crude Oil Markets column in our May Inner Circle Monthly Report. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope our readers find this month’s report useful.)
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