News and AnalysIs for

The situation Abelardo de la Espriella inherits on August 7^th has a clear statistical signature, according to El País: crude oil production is at its lowest level in 16 years – a figure corroborated by Corficolombiana – the ANH signed zero new exploration and production contracts in four years, gas reserves collapsed to the point where Colombia now imports one third of what it consumes, and the sector has posted nine consecutive quarters of declining performance.

The incoming De la Espriella government has made enabling unconventional hydrocarbon extraction one of its most explicit energy policy commitments and the outgoing Petro government has moved to make that path as legally difficult as possible with fewer than three weeks left in office.

The four-administration comparison that Valora Analitik assembled from ANH data provides the clearest single chart of what four years of Petro energy policy cost Colombia in upstream investment momentum: not a decline, not a slowdown, but a complete stop.

Luz Stella Murgas, president of the Colombian Natural Gas Association Naturgas, issued a sharp public warning on June 26 in response to the ANH’s IRR 2025 report, calling on the incoming De la Espriella administration to accelerate investment decisions and unblock stalled gas projects without delay.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) finally released Colombia’s total oil and gas reserves figures for year-end 2025 last week. Contributor Tomás de la Calle looked at Colombia’s oil reserves over the past nine years and even looked back thirty years to assess performance.

Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) has failed to publish its annual Resources and Reserves Report (IRR) for 2025, more than 45 days after the legally mandated deadline of April 30.

Colombia perforated 16 exploratory wells in the A2 and A3 categories between January and April 2026, one fewer than the 17 drilled in the same period of 2025 — a 5.9% decline that halts, at least provisionally, the momentum built during last year’s partial recovery.

Or the dominance of Ecopetrol in Colombian statistics means what it does pulls the national conclusions. In any event, 2025 was another weak year for exploration and discoveries. Sharp pencils and improved recovery saved ECP’s reserves from falling.

César Pabón, director of economic research at Corficolombiana, makes the central analytical argument in this Bloomberg Línea piece: Colombia’s next president faces an unusually narrow window to reverse the damage of the Petro era’s exploration freeze, and the cost of missing it is compounding.

Colombia’s fiscal crisis has pushed hydrocarbon policy to the center of the 2026 presidential campaign, forcing every major candidate — regardless of ideology — to grapple with the same uncomfortable arithmetic: the country’s public finances depend heavily on oil revenues, even as the sector faces declining reserves and mounting pressure over energy security.