When the World Economic Forum opens its Latin American conference in Medellín this week, the Finance Minister Mauricio Cárdenas will unveil “the new economy” of Colombia, which is no longer dependent on oil prices or minerals, but instead on large agroindustry projects and tourism.
The restructuring process of Pacific E&P will take place in the Canadian legal system after both US and Colombian authorities announced they would support this process, although Colombian regulators have ordered the firm to guarantee payments for its Colombian creditors.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy (MinMinas) has announced that Carlos Andrés Cante will replace María Isabel Ulloa, as the Vice Minister of Mines, and will continue her work in consolidating a unified national mining policy.
The Centro Democratico party of Senator Alvaro Uribe kicked off a “firmaton”, a campaign to collect signatures and a call for civil resistance, just as the peace talks and the legal instrument which will be used to approve a final agreement reaches a critical moment.
While the country’s main producing departments, Meta and Casanare had an RRR below 1.0, lower-producing departments had even worse performance, some important ones even were negative.
Community members from Íquira, Huila have called for the environmental license of Telpico to be revoked launching a number of accusations against the process. The local environmental management agency, CAM, is investigating and said that the local ordinance laws (POT) are appropriate for local leaders to control extractive projects.
Controversy surrounds the confirmation of Rodrigo Suarez as President of the National Environmental Licensing Agency (ANLA). Fernando Iregui is still in the chair and some even say he will stay there.
With a 5% contribution to Colombia’s GDP, a 25% share of Foreign Direct Investment and 40% of Colombia’s exports, there is little room for discussion of what the industry has contributed in the past. But what does the future hold?
The National Planning Department (DNP) sounded the alarms on 144 royalty funded projects which are in a “critical” state and need immediate intervention to avoid further problems, worth a total of CoP$1.2T (US$400M).
Canacol Energy (TSX:CNE) says that the firm has natural gas, it has clients that want to buy it, but it lacks the transport capacity to deliver it adequately, especially for new discoveries, and instead suffers from a “private monopoly”.