Colombia’s Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (SIC) announced on March 30, 2026 that it has opened a formal administrative procedure to evaluate a business integration request filed jointly by Ecopetrol S.A. and Gran Tierra Energy.
Ecopetrol’s Board of Directors, at a meeting held on April 6, 2026, approved an unpaid leave of absence requested by company President Ricardo Roa Barragán, authorized under Section 3 of Article 23 of the company’s bylaws.
Colombia’s environmental licensing authority ANLA granted Frontera Energy an environmental license to explore the VIM-46 block, an Exploratory Drilling Area located in the municipality of Magangué, Bolívar, in the Lower Magdalena Valley.
Ecopetrol has obtained water use certification for five additional production fields, bringing the total number of certified assets to 23 — a roster that includes the Barrancabermeja and Cartagena refineries.
Our 2026 publishing plan called for a discussion of CAPEX and Brent assumptions this week since we expected to have the major companies’ 2025 reports. We will do that but the Iran War has played havoc with oil prices and President Donald Trump’s speech the other night apparently reassured no one that global crude markets would return to normal anytime soon.
Despite a fraught electoral environment, rising interest rates, fiscal imbalances, and a 15% decline in total foreign direct investment in 2025 to US$11.5B, Colombia has opened 2026 with a striking wave of corporate transactions – a paradox that analysts trace to structural investment dynamics that operate on timelines longer than any single electoral cycle.
Promigas posted stable financial results for 2025 – revenues of CoP$6.7T (+1%), net profit up 2% to CoP$1.07T, and EBITDA flat at CoP$2.4T – but the more significant strategic story is the company’s deepening transformation from a pure-play gas infrastructure operator into a diversified energy platform, even as its gas operations delivered some of their most consequential results to date.
The Refinería de Cartagena (Reficar) returned to normal operations by March 24, 2026, nine days after an electrical supply failure struck the facility on March 15. Ecopetrol confirmed that all processing units are operating normally and that the supply of refined fuels to the national market was maintained throughout the incident.
The decision to halt the Komodo deepwater well – a joint project between Ecopetrol and Occidental Petroleum in the Colombian Caribbean – did not merely delay an exploration campaign.
A Constitutional Court ruling issued in October 2025 — Sentence T-390-25 — has sent shockwaves through Colombia’s oil and gas sector by holding Ecopetrol and its logistics subsidiary Cenit responsible for environmental and human rights damages caused by armed group attacks on the Oleoducto Trasandino (OTA), a 300-kilometer crude oil pipeline in Nariño that has been suspended since 2023 and for which no restart date exists.
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