High oil prices helped many countries to diversify and grow their economies. The Peterson Institute conducted an analysis of 40 nations to see if they took advantage of oil boom. Colombia was part of this research.
Centro Democrático’s Senator, Ernesto Macías, has been persistently denouncing the lack of follow-up to the General System of Royalties (SGR) implemented by President Santos’ government.
Last year was one of the hardest for the hydrocarbon industry. Production fell, investments declined to historically low levels and projects stopped, among many other problems. But, this year begins with good prospects and the sector hopes to recover some lost ground.
Colombian authorities are betting on offshore projects to cover at least part of the natural gas supply gap in next decade. Several companies have shown interest in this kind of project in Colombian waters.
The Colombian Association of Oil Engineers, Acipet celebrated Journalists’ Day and HCC attended the event. Topics such as the current labor situation for oil engineers, the industry’s projections for 2017 and fracking were discussed.
Colombia is not an oil country but depends on it economically. The nation’s exports have fallen for four consecutive years because of the oil crisis. In recent months, this item reported growth, again thanks to oil.
Initiatives to grant more royalties to oil-producing regions have been successful; projects will benefit the departments of Meta, Casanare, Nariño and Tolima, but irregularities regarding royalties’ management in Meta and Boyacá remain a cause for concern among authorities. These and other stories in our periodic summary.
The Energy and Gas Regulation Commission (CREG) released its management and results report for 2016. Last December CREG gave us a global balance for the year. This report goes into more detail on the regulated sectors. We will focus on Natural Gas and Propane.
Boyacá has a royalty budget of CoP$893B to finance 522 projects. However, the fact that there are pending balances for an amount of CoP$86B in 40% of the department’s municipalities is a cause for concern by local authorities.
This week’s “From our Analyst’s Desk” deals with market concentration, an economic concept regulators use to decide if there is or is not sufficient competition in an industry. That was a Colombia-wide view. Here we break down the results by basin.