President Gustavo Petro announced on March 25, 2026 that Colombia will withdraw from the international investment arbitration system – the framework under which foreign investors can bring disputes against states before private arbitral tribunals rather than national courts – citing the structural bias he argues such tribunals exhibit in favor of private claimants over sovereign governments.
A Constitutional Court ruling issued in October 2025 — Sentence T-390-25 — has sent shockwaves through Colombia’s oil and gas sector by holding Ecopetrol and its logistics subsidiary Cenit responsible for environmental and human rights damages caused by armed group attacks on the Oleoducto Trasandino (OTA), a 300-kilometer crude oil pipeline in Nariño that has been suspended since 2023 and for which no restart date exists.
The Petro government issued decrees on March 27, 2026 fixing a 7% salary increase for public servants working in national entities of the executive and judicial branches, with the same adjustment applying to teachers. The increase is retroactive to January 2026.
Speaking at the National Municipalities Congress in Cartagena on March 13, 2026, the deputy director of Colombia’s General Royalties System (SGR), Rubin Ariel Huffington Rodríguez, presented the Petro government’s royalties investment record, claiming CoP$46T mobilized across 13,127 approved projects since August 2022.
With Colombia’s presidential election approaching, the country’s energy policy has emerged as one of the sharpest lines of division among the leading candidates — with the opposition right promising an immediate reversal of the Petro-era hydrocarbon moratorium and the ruling coalition’s candidate signaling continuity in an energy transition that keeps extractive sectors alive but conditions them on environmental and social limits.
Energy and Mines Minister Edwin Palma used his appearance at the Contraloría General de la República’s forum on energy supply and storage on March 18, 2026 to frame the energy transition not as a Petro-government initiative but as a multi-administration policy commitment that should survive electoral cycles.
Colombia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy has confirmed a high-level meeting with U.S. government officials to advance an OFAC license that would allow Ecopetrol and ISA to reactivate bilateral energy projects with Venezuela.
The Petro government has formally ended gasoline subsidies paid through the national budget, while simultaneously defending an ongoing cycle of pump price reductions now complicated by a sharp spike in international crude prices driven by Middle East conflict.
A high-level Colombian delegation traveled to the Palacio de Miraflores in Caracas on March 14 after a planned border summit between President Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan acting president Delcy Rodríguez was cancelled for force majeure.
Colombia’s OCAD Paz approved 97 projects totaling CoP$1.91T for the country’s 16 PDET subregions under the second call of the 2025-2026 biennium. The initiatives will be financed through Peace Allocation resources from royalties (SGR) and were endorsed during session 86 held at the National Planning Department.
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