News and AnalysIs for

The Emir of Qatar visited Colombia last week and he and President Santos signed a number of agreements for intergovernmental cooperation. Although the agreements spanned a range of activities including sport, we found this press release on the MinMinas web page. Translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

The National Hydrocarbons Agency seeks comments by Friday, February 22, 2013 on a proposed change to royalty payments for fields where payment in kind is difficult. They call such areas Difficult to Recover Production Fields (CPDR) and rather than payment in kind, operators are to pay in cash based on production and recent average pricing.

The USO news this week highlighted an ongoing fight about the December 11th death of Milton Rivas, a union leader in Puerto Gaitan. Public officials claim his death was the union’s fault something obviously denied by the leadership. The USO’s president went to Washington to claim Rivas’ death was a result of deteriorating working conditions caused by the Free Trade Agreement with the US, a claim that makes no sense whatsoever considering this is Puerto Gaitan and not Caño Limón.

Multiple sources in the Colombian news media reported that Pacific Rubiales has signed an agreement with the National Agency to Overcome Extreme Poverty (ANSPE) and the Puerto Lopez mayor’s office, to help eradicate poverty in this municipality.

Incidents were back down again this week to 43 but there were fresh direct attacks on pipelines. Our 4-week Moving Average was down slightly and it now sits at 52 incidents per week, back where it was in November last year and still down from a peak of 58 back in October.

As reported by internet news site Vox Populi, Orlando Cabrales, president of the ANH, said that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the sector increased by between 28% and 30% in 2012 compared to 2011 figures. While in 2011 there was FDI of US$5B, in 2012, according to projections by Fedesarrollo and the Central Bank, the FDI was between US$6.4B and US$6.5.