The graph shows Ecopetrol’s attributed Net Income to its Refining and Petrochemicals line of business for the full year 2014 and prior years. The good news is that things are not as bad as last year. The bad news is fairly obvious: it still lost nearly US$450M.
The price of fuel in Colombia fell for the fourth straight month, but the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MinMInas) says that a weak peso against the dollar continues to keep the fall modest.
In an apparent effort to avoid a truckers strike and ward off critics of its fuel pricing policy, the central government made a surprise announcement to cut both diesel and gasoline prices by CoP$300 (US$0.12), bringing gasoline to its lowest level in almost five years.
“Let’s do the time warp again!” One of the protagonists has changed and at last the government has weighed in but it still feels like 2013 all over again with Naturgas saying there is plenty of gas and an industry association, now the ACP, saying there is not.
The drop in the oil price has spurred dramatic cuts in the investment plans of Colombia’s most important operators, but there is a long ripple effect that the price fall has on the communities, junior operators and side projects that go beyond the big headlines. Here is a summary of some of the more relevant stories to emerge over the last week or so.
On Tuesday we published our index graph of retail fuel prices through February and the average of WTI and Brent in pesos as a proxy for the price of a barrel of oil. We noted that retail prices were 20 to 30% above where they were in January 2010 even though crude prices were 15% below.
Over the last three years the biofuels industry has seen an expansion of its production capacity, now with 14 plants, four of which that have been built in this period.
Crude oil price benchmarks WTI and Brent are not identical so there is a gap. Some think the gap has some physical meaning. Others believe it is tautological: the consequence of different economic forces acting on each benchmark price.
We are not yet plumbing new depths – prices have been lower even in this century, even since the founding of the ANH – but likewise there is little beyond perhaps wishful thinking that this is going to stop soon.
The use of US Dollars as a reference for biofuels has meant a substantial increase in the cost of these fuels, raising doubts as to whether increasing the mixture of biofuels in diesels or gasoline is an economically sound decision.
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