Orlando Díaz Montoya, manager of Ecopetrol’s Barrancabermeja refinery, spoke to national business paper La República about the modernization project that is moving forward there. According to Diaz, in 2012 the project advanced 12.3% and is now being engineered to join new systems to existing ones. To start this phase requires the purchase of land, logging permits, permits for the connection to the national interconnected system, an Environmental Management Plan and a Port Concession.
Local news website NoticiasDeVillavicencio quotes Alan Jara, governor of Meta, saying that the process of building a refinery in Meta continues. To this end the government created the company Llanopetrol which is associated with the U.S. company, Structural Solution. The name of the refinery will be Llasol and, according Jara, the land for the construction is available, there is oil to be refined and the project has the support of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
If one were confronted with the simple question: “What is the price of a barrel of oil?” you would need to reply in turn with many other questions: “When?”, “Where?”, “A physical or a ‘paper’ barrel?”, “What quality?”, “To be sold/bought by whom?”, etc.
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$5.
The popular press likes to report on the movement of WTI and Brent as benchmarks for Colombia crude prices. In the worst cases, they only report WTI often calling it “the price of oil”. The reality is that Colombian crude spans a number of grades and qualities based on viscosity and sulfur content. The global benchmarks are relevant but quality and transportation cost against such benchmarks are what determines price. The graph shows the distribution of API (viscosity) by volume as measured by the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
According to a MinMinas press release, natural gas service this year reached 550,000 new users and electricity subsidies for economic stata 1, 2 and 3 will total CoP$ 2.3B (US$1.3B). This was announced on Monday by MinMinas, Federico Renjifo, as part of the mining and energy sector Accountability Public Hearing.
Ecopetrol guarantees that all diesel fuel from January 1st, 2013 will have only 50ppm sulfur. From an Ecopetrol press release with comments by Hydrocarbons Colombia.
The Spanish electricity generation company said in a press release that it will enter the retail gas market next year. According to the press release: “This initiative responds to the opportunities presented in the Colombian market and expectations that consumers currently have for new offers and agents.”
RCN Radio reports what appears to be a Transgas Occidente press release.
In November 2011 and May 2012 there were breaks in the line of the PK78 PK77 sector of the Mariquita-Cali pipeline. In order to repair these breaks, the Transgas de Occidente company has invested CoP$9,000M in a realignment of 550 meters. PK77-PK78 sector is located in the city of Manizales.
As reported RCN Radio, while in Venezuela and Ecuador the price per gallon of gasoline is US$0,19 and US$1,54 respectively, in Colombia is US$4.14, the fourth highest in Latin America. Uruguay is the Latin American country with the most expensive gasoline (US$5.75 per gallon), followed by Brazil (US$5.34 per gallon) and Chile (US$4.39 per gallon). The high price per gallon of gasoline in Colombia surpasses even that of the United States, where it is estimated that a gallon of gasoline costs US$2.85. It takes a barrel of oil to produce 42 gallons of gasoline.
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