News and AnalysIs for

As reported by newspaper El Nuevo Siglo, there are now about 50,302 oil service workers in Colombia. Of these, 18,401 (36%) are unqualified staff, 18,431 (37%) have a technical degree and 13,470 (27%) are professionals. 15.636 (31%) are permanent employees and 34.667 (69%) have a temporary contract.

Newspaper El Neuvo Siglo reports on the growth of bio-fuels from a forum called “Past, present and future of bio-fuels policy in Colombia”. It says that demand has doubled in just the past two years. The current mix is 8% bio-fuel to 92% conventional gasoline and the industry wants that to increase to 10%. Bio-diesel is another opportunity especially in large scale mining operations.

Water issues are especially important in Colombia given the uncertain framework around unconventional hydrocarbons and the significant use of water both as an input and an output of heavy oil extraction in the Llanos. Recently the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development brought together a number of government and academic groups to study underground aquifers. From a MinAmbiente press release, translated, and with comments by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

Despite the wild swings of global benchmarks, most Colombian producers managed to keep their prices steady, losing only US$1 or so from their 2Q12 prices. But Ecopetrol’s average realized price was down over US$4 and C&C Energy’s price was down nearly US$5.

Ecopetrol had its last board meeting of the year on Sunday December 16th which approved the capital expenditure (CAPEX) budget for 2013. The company will invest over US$9.5B or about the equivalent of a quarter’s worth of revenue across all its varied businesses. The ‘mother ship’ will get about 70% of all CAPEX although this varies considerably across the various business units. We found it surprising that investments outside Colombia will get 11% of total Exploration and Production investment (US$654M) even though today, these represent only about 1% of current production.

Gran Tierra announced its capital expenditures (CAPEX) Budget for 2013 will be US$363M of which US$295M will be spent on drilling and seismic activities. Colombia will receive US$224M or 62% of the total. The company will spend US$67M on Brazil but may spend more if initial onshore exploration results prove positive. Its production guidance for 2013 is 20,000bd net of working interest and royalties, which would be about 33% more than 3Q12.

Pacific Rubiales published an operational report full of interesting information but the real jaw-dropper was the growth in the venerable Rubiales field since receiving National Environmental Licensing Agency (ANLA) permission on August 8th to increase water injection. The field had produced (gross before royalties and working interest) 169mbd in July and that was the third month in a row that production had dropped. Production was only slightly better in August at 170mbd. But since then Rubiales’ field production has grown at 4% per month and the company says it is currently “in excess of 200 mbd” – 30mbpd higher than in July.

The main story this week is the assassination of Milton Enrique Rivas, a union leader in Termotécnica, a Cepsa subcontractor in Puerto Gaitan, Meta. The USO has been trying to widen the conflict to include both Ecopetrol and Pacific Rubiales to no avail. Local authorities and the company blame union member for Rivas’ murder which – whether true or not – only raises tensions. This unfortunate death will have wider implications since Colombia’s black mark is a high rate of assassinations of union leaders, which obviously gets the attention of international labor groups, NGOs and even the Democratic Party in the US:

Incidents were down considerably this week – everyone must be getting ready for the holiday. We calculate a 4-week moving average to smooth out weekly variations and although that rose significantly in the run-up to the first round of peace talks, it dropped almost as rapidly to settle at about 40 incidents per week. This value has held for the last five weeks and appears to be the “new normal”. There was a secondary peak just as this round of talks started and but since then counts have dropped for four straight weeks.

On Tuesday December 11 union leader Milton Enrique Rivas was killed in Puerto Gaitán (Meta). Rivas worked for Termotécnica, embroiled in a dispute with the Petroleum Workers Union (USO), and was killed a few meters from the company’s offices.