Cerro Matoso, Colombia’s ferronickel producer in Córdoba, cut its operations 50% indefinitely as of August 4, after Canacol Energy continued restricting gas deliveries to below 4,000 MBTUD — less than a quarter of the contracted volume.
By now you must know that we made it through the SPEC maintenance window without regulated customers noticing anything and no power blackouts. If we hadn’t, you certainly would have heard about it.
Petrobras and Ecopetrol confirmed a new natural gas discovery with the drilling of the Sandía-1 exploration well, located in the GUA-OFF-0 block in deep water offshore Colombia.
Deutsche Bank’s assessment of a fast-developing El Niño episode – potentially among the six most intense since 1870 – named Colombia as Latin America’s most exposed economy, projecting the country’s price index could rise roughly 1.4 percentage points before year-end, the largest inflationary impact in the region alongside Peru’s 1.1 points.
Decreto 0526 de 2026 has raised alarms in Cauca after the Compañía Energética de Occidente (CEO) warned the measure will alter the Fondo de Energía Social (FOES) and could push energy bills up by as much as 30% for roughly 178,000 users starting June 1, 2027.
Ecopetrol raised its natural gas contribution to 97 GBTUd to help cover the deficit created by the scheduled maintenance of the SPEC LNG regasification plant, which ran from Thursday, July 30th to Monday, August 3rd.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy reported that scheduled maintenance at the SPEC regasification terminal in Cartagena reached 79% completion as of the morning of August 2, with the ministry projecting 86% progress by midnight and full completion by midday August 3, followed by a cooling phase ahead of restart.
Minister Edwin Palma used the opening of the Foro de Gas 2026 in Bogotá on July 30 – the same day SPEC’s scheduled five-day maintenance began – to issue a formal government guarantee of continuous essential gas and electricity supply through August 3.
With fewer than two weeks left in his administration, President Gustavo Petro declared a national disaster for El Niño on July 23 and routed CoP$8T through the National Disaster Risk Management Unit (UNGRD).
Naturgas president Luz Stella Murgas publicly rejected statements made by Colgas’s chief executive – who had told media that natural gas prices would increase – describing the claims as “imprecise and without technical basis” that create unnecessary confusion and misinform users.
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