The U’WA indigenous group, who has been blocking access of repair crews to damaged sections of the Caño Limón – Coveñas pipeline, skipped a meeting scheduled for April 18th with the national government and say they will only meet for a previously established roundtable on the 25th. Meanwhile, the pipeline remains out of service.
Small diameter pipeline says it has added a line of informative sessions in addition to those required for its environmental permit and completed a diploma course that it sponsored for communities in the area of influence.
In Huila and Putumayo, the number of tankers on the road has dropped by 40% since an announcement three weeks ago from President Juan Manuel Santos that pipelines would be used instead of trucks when possible to reach the Tumaco port.
Proposals for reorganizing how hydrocarbons are transported, everything from an integration of large trucking firms to optimize use, to trains and to harnessing the Magdalena River have all been proposed over the last week.
The damage and aftermath of guerrilla attacks on this sensitive set of pipelines keeps on snowballing, with reports estimating that the lost barrels have long surpassed a million and that a good portion of the Caño Limon field is at a halt.
The final stretch of the Colombia’s great oil infrastructure: The Bicentennial Pipeline passes through Caño Limon, which is fraught with problems. Guerrillas attack it, while an indigenous community will not let crews in to repair it. The end result is missed shipments, 35,000bd of lost production worth millions a day and jobs for the local community. Who will right this situation?
A meeting in Yopal that included all the big institutions from the national government for a roads project in Casanare yielded an offer of support from the national government, but the local authorities say it pales in comparison to the costs of keeping heavy trucks on the road.
Frequent attacks on the Caño Limon and Bicentennial Pipeline have claimed another causality: 500 jobs with Occidental de Colombia (Oxy), who has cut the positions as their pumping station in Arauca has been unable to keep up optimum crude levels for a month due to attacks from the ELN guerrilla, while another report says partner Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) has declared force majeure on shipments for the same reason.
Ecopetrol’s (NYSE:EC) transport and logistics spinoff Cenit has celebrated its first year of operations, and hailed the completion of the Bicentennial Pipeline as the highlight for this first year.
President Juan Manuel Santos told local press that an agreement with the Ecuadorian government to transport crude from Putumayo to the Ecuadorian Pacific coast is ready, an option to help alleviate congested transportation routes in the area but not without security problems due to guerrilla attacks.
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