News and AnalysIs for

We hit a new record for articles about fracking (pro and con) for a single week. There were more articles both pro (25) and con (33) than we had ever seen in a single week for the combined total (21) but the Fracker Tracker slipped further into the red.

Francisco José Lloreda, President of the Colombian Petroleum Association (ACP), spoke about important issues for the oil sector such as production, royalties and popular referendums among other issues in an interview for the business paper Dinero.

General Comptroller, Edgardo Maya, warned about the risks of implementing fracking in Colombia, reopening the controversy on the subject.

The Colombian Chamber of Goods and Services (Campetrol) reported its drill rig information for July 2018. The good trend continues, as the industry reported more rigs working in this period compared to July 2017 and previous month.

The possible loss of oil self-sufficiency has been one of the main issues discussed in Colombia during last years. The development of unconventional deposits is one of the most attractive alternatives to solve this concern and the sector is ready to move forward on this issue.

The president of the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), Orlando Velandia, spoke about prospects and projects for the sector in the first half of the year, among other topics.

Maria Fernanda Suarez, Minister of Mines and Energy (MinMinas), created a debate about the possibility of implementing unconventional techniques such as fracking in Colombia. Experts talked about this alternative.

Julio César Vera, president of the Colombian Association of Petroleum Engineers (Acipet), spoke about the importance of fracking to assure the country’s self-sufficiency.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) spoke about what must be done to assure the success of the industry in Colombia.

This week we skip our ‘Last 8 years’ qualitative feature in favor of a guest contribution but we continue the series in our quantitative analysis column. Last week we looked at turnover in key policy positions. If policy instability put off investors, we would expect it to show up in investment and exploration statistics, which is what we look at here.