Colombia Reports Five Attacks on Oil Pipelines

Colombia’s state-owned oil company Ecopetrol has reported five attacks on two pipelines, adding that exports of the commodity have not been affected.

The Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline was attacked three times, Ecopetrol’s subsidiary Cenit reported, as quoted by Reuters, and the Bicentenario pipeline suffered two attacks. It added that the Colombian army had been deployed to the area of the attacks on the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline to protect staff who were repairing the infrastructure.

Colombia’s oil pipelines are a frequent target for guerilla groups active in the country. They are also targeted by crime groups stealing crude and using it in drug production, Reuters said in its report.

Colombia currently produces close to 800,000 barrels of oil daily but wants to increase this to over 1 million bpd. For 2024, the target is to reach 800,000 bpd, the head of the country’s energy regulator said earlier in the year.

At the same time, the current government has ambitious plans for wind and solar growth as it seeks to reduce Colombia’s dependence on oil, gas, and coal revenues. Hydrocarbons, however, remain a major contributor to budget revenues. Even so, the Petro government has not held any new oil and gas exploration tenders since coming into office.

State oil company Ecopetrol is contributing to the output increase through enhanced oil recovery techniques, improving extraction volumes from reservoirs. Colombia's current oil recovery rate averages 27 percent, energy minister Andres Camacho said in May this year.

The government is also reviewing contracts for oil exploration due to speculation, with some companies signing contracts just to resell them at higher prices without conducting any actual exploration—a practice that could stifle future oil production.

“We're going contract by contract to see where there really are good reasons to suspend these activities and where there aren't, to declare possible non-compliance due to negligence,” Orlando Velandia, head of the energy regulator ANH said earlier this year.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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