News and AnalysIs for

Ecopetrol has kicked off its third National Call to Biodiversity, and is on the lookout to invest US$2.2M in conservation projects that focus on the tropical dry forest. From an Ecopetrol press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

The USO claims 9,000 people attended a rally last week in Meta to denounce abuses to workers and the community by oil and gas companies. As we have described recently, the USO is tapping into a current of popular discontent in the department, caused principally by changes in the royalty distribution scheme.

Sounding like something from a Transformers movie and merging the acronym ‘OCAD’ (for the initials in Spanish of the boards that approve projects looking for royalty money) and ‘marathon’, the invented word ‘OCADton’ is supposed to reassure local municipalities that the process is working faster in 2013. From a DNP press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

On Tuesday, local news portal Prensa Libre Casanare reported that, through the mediation of a delegate of the Ministry of Interior, residents of the Monterrey and Aguazul communities lifted the block on the Cupiagua field, which is controlled by Ecopetrol. According to Luis Eduardo Cardozo, a spokesman for the protesters, the blockade was lifted but the community is still unhappy: “We demand social investment, labor supply and procurement of goods and services,” he said.

This article in on a website that frequently criticizes the extractive industry is perhaps exaggerated, but at root there is also an issue: local communities do not perceive direct benefits from oil and gas activities in their communities.

When we saw this, we thought it was a garbled rumor but it appeared on the National Planning Department (DNP) website. Then on TV we saw Blair sitting with senior DNP officials and smiling to the press at the foot of the main staircase in the presidential palace. The story passed from rumor to theater of the absurd. From a DNP press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

The Colombian Petroleum Workers Union, USO, always goes for the big targets: Ecopetrol and Pacific Rubiales. Ecopetrol is open to political pressure from the President of the Republic on down. Pacific annoys them perhaps because it is less subject to political pressure which is why the union went to Canada to protest. The union says Ecopetrol workers in Meta will be on strike this week because contractors pay workers below agreed wages.

This week the forum on political participation organized by the United Nations Office on Colombia and the Colombian National University Think Tank for Peace took place. The purpose of the forum was to create a space for participation in which citizens were invited to express their views on the peace process.

A timely workshop organized by MinMinas investigated crisis management for the hydrocarbons industry, presumably directed at the ongoing issue of community blockades. This is becoming a serious issue for many companies, more serious perhaps than the guerrilla so the ministry picked the right priority. From a MinMinas press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

The USO continues to publish stories that Ecopetrol is not paying contractors (and so the contractors are not paying their workers). This week Ecopetrol workers at the Chichimene station held a work stoppage in sympathy.