News and AnalysIs for

Monday December 10, 2012 was the regular “Rendering of Accounts” for the Ministry of Mines and Energy. These sessions are important for the public to understand what has been accomplished and they provide an opportunity for feedback and questions. Unfortunately we struggled to stay awake because MinMinas had virtually nothing new to say about the sector that had not been said at the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) “Rendering of Accounts” session on November 30. We were disappointed.

It was telling that MinMinas reported that President Juan Manuel Santos announced a plan to boost the Putumayo department development. The department is one of the poorest and yet is the focus of much oil exploration and production. The projects initiated or ongoing have to do with issues of energy, roads, health, education, land titling and victims’ restitution. According to Santos, the government will set a special price for gasoline in this border department and there will be permanent electricity in Puerto Asis.

National business magazine Dinero has finally recognized the challenges facing the industry. The article points out that while the oil industry is one of the strongest in the country, there has been no major oil discovery recently, terrorist attacks on pipelines continue, there are delays with the environmental licensing (as we recently reported) and strikes and shut-ins in the oil fields.

National weekly news magazine Semana published a report about the country’s regions where the most organized violent incidents are happening. According to the report, the division splintering of large criminal organizations has led to the emergence of criminal gangs seeking to appropriate the local illicit business.

National business newspaper Portafolio reports that the study “System of cities” of the World Bank and Colombia’s National Planning Department revealed the underdevelopment of the country’s road system. According to the study, apart from the usual traffic jams in cities, there is a notable lack of connectivity between them. In addition, the study states that “if Colombia had the quality of infrastructure of Costa Rica, economic growth could be up to 3 percent higher.”

This week the USO reported on its national assembly and its plans to create an occupational health department. More important is a news item on hearings in Villavicencio on the social and environmental impacts of the mining and hydrocarbons sectors in the department of Meta. A left-wing senator, Alexander López Maya told the hearing that working conditions in Puerto Gaitan were typical of a concentration camp. That’s strange considering that Pacific Rubiales told a conference on sustainable communities and petroleum last Friday that it had no community or labor relations issues in Puerto Gaitan. Although the truth is no doubt somewhere between zero and the Gulag archipelago, we are inclined to think it very much closer to the company’s point of view than one reported by the USO.