News and AnalysIs for

National business newspaper Portafolio reports that the companies Abocol, Compas and Saam will partner to invest US$45M in the Buenavista Port of Cartagena. The port, which has a capacity of 8,000 metric tons of cargo, is currently under the administration of Puerto Buenavista SA. The investment will be used to expand the wharf of 211 meters long, to improve infrastructure and to provide it with equipment to improve its performance quality.

Frequent readers of our monthly report will be familiar with our challenges in getting timely, consistent information from the National Environmental Licensing Agency (ANLA).

The CARs are the regional autonomous corporations that manage water resources regionally. Organized by watershed, they historically have been inefficient, under-resourced for their mandate and in many cases corrupt. Despite this, the Environment and Sustainable Development Ministry wants to give them a clearer mandate and better resources. The National Environmental Licensing Agency (ANLA) has a pilot program to delegate responsibility for some areas to the CARs. Here MinAmbiente announces the timetable for bringing reforms to Congress. From an MinAmbiente press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

This is the latest in a steam of announcements by the state-owned oil company about new patents coming out of their R&D group. From an Ecopetrol press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

Finance Minister (MinHacienda) Mauricio Cardenas spoke to the Morgan stanley Latin America Executive Conference in Miami, recapping the country’s macroeconomic progress over the past years. From a MinHacienda press release, translated and with commentary by Hydrocarbons Colombia.

Source: Campetrol, Hydrocarbons Colombia
This graph shows the latest data published by the Colombian Petroleum Services Association (Campetrol) from 2011 which is the last full year for which data is available from the Colombian company regulator SuperSociedades. These companies are registered in standard industry code (CIIU) C1120 which is defined as “SERVICE ACTIVITIES. RELATING TO OIL AND GAS EXTRACTION, EXCLUDING SURVEYING” Twenty-five firms or 16% of the companies studied comprise 80% of industry revenues. The Top 5 include industry heavyweights like Schlumberger, Haliburton, Weatherford and Baker Hughes. But there is a very long tail of 134 companies with average 2011 revenue of US$7.8M. (Twenty-eight firms have no data and so were excluded.) The bottom 50% of firms (80 companies) have average revenues of US$1M.