The Labor Minister Luis Eduardo (Lucho) Garzón admitted that the government did not have a plan to confront the crisis in the industry generated by the collapse of oil prices.
The incident count was up by two this week to 30 but that was entirely due to the Armed Forces as our measure of guerrilla-initiated incidents stayed flat at 4.
The USO sees several convenient political battles where it can gain ground and is aggressively approaching them: promises from the government on the Barrancabermeja Refinery modernization, worker layoffs due to price fall and increases in natural gas prices to the end user on the Caribbean coast.
The fall in the price of oil has moved the government to sound the alarms and start inspecting oil companies and contractors to verify their liquidity and ability to pay workers, suppliers and meet other obligations
The Minister of Environment Gabriel Vallejo says that he wants to avoid creating green taxes, but instead install or enforce charges for actions that have an environmental impact.
The first round of talks in 2015 started on Monday, kicking off what President Juan Manuel Santos describes as “the most difficult stage” of the talks, as the issue of how to structure a post-conflict transition becomes the focus.