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Last week, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella signed Directive 06, by which his government hopes to expedite the prior consultation process especially for high-priority energy projects like Sirius. Here we go deeper into the detail. Somehow, this all sounds terribly familiar.

The lead graph shows the price of Ecopetrol’s ADR’s (Symbol: EC) from January 1^st, up nearly 70% from the start of the year. But then oil prices are up, “thanks” to the Iran War, now a wider Middle East conflict and a favorable change in government.

I don’t think I’m at much risk of being fired from my own business. If my clients don’t like what I’m writing they can stop reading me or if chronic, not renew. Maybe.

Promigas’s 27th annual natural gas sector report frames 2026 around a single organizing idea: energy security. Colombia has moved from being self-sufficient in gas to permanently import-dependent, and the document argues the country’s real vulnerability is no longer whether molecules exist somewhere in global markets, but whether Colombia has the local capacity to contract, finance, transport, and operate them reliably under stress.

I was and then I wasn’t going to use this biweekly opinion piece to comment on desirable qualities of the new CEO of Ecopetrol. I had decided there was a high risk of publishing just as ECP announced Joaquín Gutiérrez’s appointment. But five days after the board, the NOC has made no announcement and then I saw a relevant editorial in El Heraldo.

Some might hope that gas production improves since SPEC is reaching its capacity and no other LNG import facilities have come online. That’s not the case.

Round one of the presidential elections was in May and we have had Abelardo de la Espriella (ADLE) for a month. What can we expect from now to December?

Technically it’s over. Practically speaking, it isn’t. Gustavo Petro was still president of Colombia in July and his temporary substitute for Ricardo Roa will be there until the end of the third quarter. Even if he leaves directly after the board meeting at the end of September, he will have been in charge for virtually all of the quarter.

We easily accept that 18th Century technology was radically different from today, but we can be shocked to find that human and political issues haven’t changed.

We looked at our Line-of-Business charts to understand the NOC’s 2Q26 results and to no one’s surprise, they were uniformly good and mostly due to Brent.