For more than a year, oil producers in Colombia worked with little worry that a pipeline explosion or another act of sabotage would interfere with their activities. Now, the quiet time is over. Colombia’s guerillas are on the warpath once again.
Two weeks ago, Colombia’s state oil and gas operator, Ecopetrol, reported five attacks on two major pipelines. The Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline was attacked three times, Ecopetrol’s subsidiary Cenit reported, and the Bicentenario pipeline suffered two attacks. The company 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.
According to Bloomberg, there have been at least 14 attacks on oil pipelines in Colombia since late August after talks between the guerilla group ELN and the Colombian government broke down. Said talks had been going on for about a year with several interruptions whenever the ELN disagreed with what the Gustavo Petro government offered.
The group, inspired by the Cuban revolution, is the oldest guerilla organization in the world, dating back to 1964 and numbering more than 5,800 members as of 2022, according to AFP. Infrastructure sabotage is a favored tactic for the group to get concessions from the government. The oil pipelines are a natural target in a situation not dissimilar to that in Libya.
Oil exports account for about a third of Colombia’s export revenues, meaning any impact on oil production would be an impact on oil exports and, consequently, state revenues. Indeed, when Ecopetrol issued an update on operations earlier this month, it said the attacks on the pipelines had hurt its output.
“The lacking availability of the aforementioned pipelines, due to the attacks, added to difficulty in moving tankers with hydrocarbons and liquefied petroleum gas, may impact crude oil and gas production in the coming days, as well as supplies for the Barrancabermeja and Cartagena refineries and fuels in different parts of the country,” the company said in a statement last week.
This is rather unfortunate for an industry that has been struggling for years—not least because of attacks on pipelines—and that now faces a fresh challenge from the Petro government, which wants to reduce the share of hydrocarbons in Colombia’s revenue mix.
Indeed, last year, the Colombian government halted the issuance of new oil and gas exploration permits as one way of combating climate change. The move shook the industry and observers, with some warning it would compromise its economic future by making it more exposed to international oil prices as domestic production dwindles due to natural depletion.
Yet Gustavo Petro’s commitment to a transition away from oil and gas has one thing to be said about it: it would reduce the leverage the ELN has with pipelines as targets for sabotage acts. Unfortunately, the transition would provide ample new targets in the form of wind and solar installations—the transition goals of Colombia’s first-ever leftist president, whose ban on new oil and gas permits should have been welcomed by the ELN
“The ELN believes that the oil companies have been able to get contracts that are very advantageous for themselves, but bad for the country,” Carlos Velandia, a former senior commander in the ELN, told Bloomberg.
The publication explained in a recent story that the guerilla group believes Colombia should have full control over its natural resources, perhaps in a Venezuelan style. Apparently, until such time as this happens, the means of extracting these resources and transporting them to markets will continue to be targeted as lasting peace with the Colombian government remains elusive.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
