It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 23, 2021
British Columbia
Mountain goat 'turned the tables,' killed grizzly bear in Yoho National Park
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The bear was found with puncture wounds consistent with a mountain goat's horns, says Parks Canada ecologist
Parks Canada says a mountain goat, like the one seen in this file photo, killed a grizzly bear in Yoho National Park. (Parks Canada)Grizzly bears are known as one of the most ferocious predators in the forest; few can stand against them. Except for a rare circumstance in eastern B.C.'s Yoho National Park, where a mountain goat took one on — and won.
According to Parks Canada, a forensic necropsy of a female grizzly bear determined that it died of wounds inflicted by the mountain goat.
David Laskin, wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada, said the bear was found with puncture wounds at the bottom of the neck and armpits, consistent with a mountain goat's horns.
"[It] was the result of an unsuccessful predation attempt on a mountain goat. And I guess the mountain goat was successful in the circumstance. And it ultimately turned the tables on this bear," he said on CBC's Radio West.
He said that it was consistent with the predatory attack behaviour of grizzly bears and the defensive response of mountain goats.
The grizzly, not unlike the one pictured here, weighed 70 kilograms and was healthy prior to its death. (Jakub Moravec/Shutterstock)
"When grizzlies attack, they tend to focus on the head in the back of the neck and the shoulders of their prey. And this is usually from above. So in turn, the defensive response of the mountain goat would be to protect itself using its sharp points," Laskin said.
The remains of the grizzly bear were found on Sept. 4 by a hiker on Burgess Path, near Golden, B.C. According to Laskin, the bear was female and weighed 70 kilograms. While mountain goats usually weigh around the same, he said he's seen some weigh over 130 kilograms.
Laskin says the adult bear was smaller in size among the population of 25 to 30 grizzlies in Yoho and Kootenay national parks, but it was not unusually small.
The bear was an adult, but the necropsy showed no signs she had ever had cubs.
Laskin says it's hard to gauge the bear's hunting experience, but her smaller size may have played a role in the fatal attack.
Parks Canada said it removed the carcass from the area to prevent it from attracting any wildlife that may pose a risk to visitors.
The department also said that although goats are well-equipped to protect themselves, it is rare to see one actually kill a bear.
Sophie Kaloudas, left, Aishwarya Puttur, centre, and Mackenzie Cumming, right, have all helped organize climate strikes in their communities for Sept. 24. We asked them what they would say to the new Canadian government. (Images submitted by Sophie Kaloudasm, Aishwarya Puttur and Mackenzie Cumming)
CBC Kids News • Published September 23
⭐️HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW⭐️
Kids across Canada will skip school on Sept. 24 for a climate strike.
Organizers say they want Canada to stop using fossil fuels.
We talked to organizers to see what they’d say to Canada’s new government.
Fifteen-year-old Sophie Kaloudas remembers the moment she became a climate activist.
It happened back in Grade 7, when she and her class were watching a documentary on climate change.
“I was sitting there, so dialed in, and after, I was crying. I remember thinking, ‘It’s real, this is happening,’ and afterward I saw Greta Thunberg and other youth, and was like, ‘Oh it’s not just me.’”
Not long after, Sophie said she became the first person — along with her dad — to strike in her small town of Fenelon Falls, Ontario.
Two years later, following many #FridaysForFuture climate strikes worldwide, Sophie and other kids across Canada will once again be skipping school, this time to demand action from Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, which was re-elected on Sept 20.
The climate strike will take place across the world on Sept. 24, and is expected to be the biggest since before the pandemic
. For this strike, Fridays for Future Canada is using the hashtag #UpRootTheSystem, which is meant to highlight how climate change unfairly affects people who are already struggling, like minority communities. (Image credit: @fridays_for_future_canada/Instagram)
Demands behind the protest
In a news release, Fridays for Future Toronto said Monday’s election “has confirmed that Canadians are worried about the climate crisis, and we must make sure the newly elected government prioritizes climate action.”
Climate strikers have many demands for the government, but the main focus is a move away from fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.
For context, some experts praised Trudeau’s climate plan during the recent election campaign because it included ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gases and a carbon tax, among other things.
However, others said it didn’t go far enough, as the Liberals didn’t say how they planned to achieve those targets by 2030, and because they’re continuing to work on pipelines.
We asked three climate strikers what they would say to the Canadian government if they had the chance. Here’s some of what they had to say: Small town, big message
Sophie said that despite the small numbers in her town, she’d be protesting rain or shine on Friday
. Sophie Kaloudas has been protesting for more climate action since September 2019. (Image submitted by Sophie Kaloudas)
“I’ll be having a socially distanced climate strike. We don’t actually have a city hall in our town, so we’ll be striking on the main street.”
Sophie said that the pandemic has motivated her more than ever because delays in vaccine distribution to poorer countries have exposed inequities on the planet.
She said she’s worried that people in poorer countries will also be the last to get help when it comes to addressing climate change.
When asked what she’d say to the government, she questioned Canada’s mixed messaging.
“You aren’t really taking any action and still investing in fossil fuels and pipelines, and yet you pretend you’re a climate champion. You’re really not.” ‘Stick to the plan’
Aishwarya Puttur, a 16-year-old from Waterloo, Ontario, said her lightbulb moment came when she was in Grade 4
. Aishwarya Puttur said she wants world leaders to stop talking about climate change as some future event and acknowledge that it’s happening now. (Image submitted by Aishwarya Puttur)
Although she’s from Canada, Aishwarya was living in Saudi Arabia at the time.
“I was in the car going to school and I realized there was a lot of plastic trash on the sidewalks and everywhere and thought, ‘Does no one do anything with this?’
“That exact same day, we were given lollipops at school and all of the kids decided to throw them out the window,” she said. “I got so angry and thought, ‘People just don’t care about the environment.’”
This Friday, she’ll be co-ordinating a digital strike with people from around the globe, with workshops on things like eco-anxiety and racial justice within climate justice. Eco-anxiety: How to manage climate stress
When asked what she’d say to the government, Aishwarya said she wants more accountability.
“TIme and time again the Liberal government has proven to say they’ll do things, but [they] fall behind on every single plan and goal they make.
“We need to ensure that whatever you’re doing, you’re going to stick to the plan because this isn’t just my future, but millions of people’s present.” Leaving carbon behind, not Canadians
Mackenzie Cumming, a 16-year-old from Calgary, Alberta, helped organize an in-person strike in Calgary, but it was changed to a virtual strike due to rising COVID-19 cases.
Mackenzie Cumming, left, says that the main goal of this protest is to pressure the government to transition Canada away from fossil fuels. (Image credit: Mackenzie Cumming)
The plan is to have strikers take photos of themselves while holding signs, then they’ll “tag politicians and spread awareness on social media” as a way of demanding action.
Mackenzie said that although strikers are demanding a move away from fossil fuels, they want to focus on a “just transition” that ensures that those in the industry aren’t left jobless.
“Cutting things will have big impacts on people. Climate action isn’t supposed to make people suffer. We want a transition plan that helps everyone get past fossil fuels.” How Canada’s wildfires are connected to climate change
When asked what she’d say to the government, Mackenzie acknowledged Canada’s capacity to create change.
“I don’t think any levels of government are doing enough on climate. And we have the power to be a climate leader, but we’re not a climate leader yet.” Government response
CBC Kids News reached out to the Canadian government to give officials a chance to respond to these concerns. We hadn’t heard back by publishing time.
In the meantime, take a look back at some of the climate promises Trudeau — and other world leaders — have made in 2021:
Starbucks pushes back against US workers’ cafe-by-cafe union vote
SMALL BUSINESS ARE NOW FRANCHISE OWNERS SO YES THEY CAN
Employees at three Starbucks locations in the Buffalo, New York area have petitioned to join Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union.
The past year has seen the launch of new high-profile labour union campaigns at nonunion companies including Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc in addition to the campaign at Starbucks
[File: Victor J Blue/Bloomberg]
By Amelia Pollard and Josh Eidelson
Bloomberg 23 Sep 2021
Starbucks Corp. workers shouldn’t have the right to vote for a union on a cafe-by-cafe basis, the coffee chain told the U.S. labor board amid efforts by workers in Buffalo, New York, to organize.
“The facts and the law do not support holding individual and separate elections,” Starbucks attorney Alan Model said in his opening statement Thursday during a hearing held by the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees unionization in the U.S.
Model argued that, because of similarities among the stores, any labor vote should include employees at all 20 of the company’s Buffalo-area locations — meaning the union would need backing from a majority of participating workers across the region in order to win.
His comments follow August petitions by employees at three Starbucks locations in the Buffalo area to join Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The union has signaled it has support at additional stores but isn’t currently seeking elections there. The campaign calls itself “Starbucks Workers United.”
The Starbucks proposal for a regional vote would “depart from decades of precedent,” the union’s attorney, Ian Hayes, said via email.
A labor board officer is hearing arguments on whether to have separate votes at each of the three stores or hold a larger vote. A bigger group could derail the labor campaign by flooding the election with voters with whom the union hasn’t been in contact. ‘Presumptively Appropriate’
In comments at the opening of the proceedings Wednesday, the hearing officer, Thomas Miller, said that bargaining units composed of the employees at a single location “are presumptively appropriate” under labor-board precedent, so the burden will be on Starbucks to prove why that shouldn’t be the case in Buffalo.
“In general, unions prefer smaller units because it is easier to obtain and maintain support among a smaller group of employees,” University of North Carolina law professor Jeffrey Hirsch, a former NLRB attorney, said in an email. “Employers prefer larger units for the exact same reason.”
In order to overcome the labor board’s usual presumption that an election among just one location’s employees is legitimate, companies employ strategies like “centralizing the control of labor relations” among various locations to prove that a larger voter pool is more appropriate, said Mark Pearce, who was chairman of the NLRB under President Barack Obama.
“The employer is likely to argue that the single site lacks local management autonomy to make key decisions, that there is common day-to-day supervision of employees at the multiple work sites and frequent employee interchange,” Pearce, who now directs the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown’s law school, said in an email.
Starbucks is pushing for a marketwide vote because it wants to be inclusive, said Reggie Borges, a spokesman for the company. He said that workers often pick up shifts at different locations within regions, so any one store’s action would affect others.
“It wouldn’t be fair to the partners in this market to not have a voice in whether to unionize or not,” he said. He added that the company’s position was “consistent with” a letter Starbucks Workers United sent to Starbucks before filing for elections, which said that the union’s “organizing committee includes Starbucks partners from across the Buffalo region.”
New York state’s second-largest city has been a hotbed for progressive activism in recent months. India Walton, the first socialist major-party mayoral nominee in decades, recently won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, making her the overwhelming favorite to win the office.
Along with Starbucks, the past year has seen the launch of new high-profile labor campaigns at nonunion companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. Nationwide, the Covid-19 pandemic sparked activism among so-called essential workers, while President Joe Biden’s election spurred a new push to pass reforms that would restrict management tactics, such as mandatory antiunion meetings, that have become mainstays of U.S. organizing fights.
MY MP
Blake Desjarlais is Canada’s first Two Spirit Canadian MP: ‘We’re starting to see ourselves more’
NDP candidate Desjarlais won his seat Monday night with 40.5 per cent of the votes, flipping the riding from Conservative. Former Edmonton city councillor Kerry Diotte held the seat since it was created in 2015.
“I think what made the difference in our election is making sure that we’re present in the community, we’re active in the community, and we’re there for people, because we’re going to be,” Desjarlais told Shaye Ganam on Thursday
Two Spirit is a difficult identity to explain. According to Chalifoux, who uses they/them pronouns, the definition can mean something different to different Indigenous people.
The Edmonton 2 Spirit Society has adopted the understanding that “Two Spirit peoples transcend the boundaries that are set by the binary of male and female, thereby restoring our gender fluidity among our people,” they explained.
“It’s to really help understand the diversity of traditions, cultures and understandings that have been lost to our people as we try to redefine ourselves, as well as find those cultures and traditions that have been buried.”
Canada election: Indigenous issues ‘never really risen to top’
Canada election: Indigenous issues ‘never really risen to top’
Electing someone who identifies in a way that is maybe less understood or common than other parts of the LGBTQ2S community, Chalifoux said, not only helps to make that identity more commonplace, it shows Indigenous youth growing up who may identify as Two Spirit that their voices can be heard.
“There is space available for us, even though we have been pushed to the margins and nearly eradicated and we are going through high amounts of suicide and grief and loss right now in our communities, as we have for some time.
“Our youth are going to know that, that it’s ok. It’s ok to identify who you are, to be your true being, and to see that, you know, we can be represented on TV, we can be represented in the news, we can be represented in our leadership and in parliament.”
In the 2021 election, there will be three new Indigenous MPs: Desjarlais, Adam Chambers, also Metis, who took the seat of Simcoe-North in Ontario for the Conservatives and Lori Idlout, who kept Nunavut orange, will replace NDP MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, who decided not to run again.
That means there will be 12 Indigenous MPs in this cabinet, up by one from the 2019 election.
How embracing her two-spirit self changed Kish’s life
How embracing her two-spirit self changed Kish’s life – Jun 13, 2021
On top of being Indigenous and Two Spirit, Desjarlais is also one of the youngest people elected in this campaign.
“These are some of the issues and some of the demographics that are currently missing from the House of Commons and have historically missed these perspectives from the House of Commons, which largely, I believe, contribute to the disenfranchisement of so many people in our community.”
Desjarlais is the only Indigenous MP from Alberta.
MP Blake Desjarlais on how he will represent Edmonton-Griesbach in Ottawa
Blake Desjarlais is the new member of Parliament for Edmonton-Griesbach. Desjarlais is from the Fishing Lake Metis Settlement and former energy industry worker. He’s also the first two spirit MP in the country. He joined Vinesh Pratap on the noon news to talk about how he plans to represent all his constituents in Canada’s capital.
NDP's Blake Desjarlais reacts to big win in Edmonton Griesbach
Sep 23, 2021
Cannabis in elite sports: Performing on a high
What's wrong with lighting up a joint ahead of the big game?
Things aren't quite that simple when it comes to cannabis in competitive sports.
The World Anti-Doping Agency is set to review its list of banned substances.
Safety issues could arise when using cannabis before competing in certain elite sports, say some experts
Sha'Carri Richardson would have been a favorite to win a medal in Tokyo. The sprinter won the 100 meters at the US Olympic trials. Then she was slapped with a 30-day ban from competition after testing positive for marijuana use. This forced the 21-year-old from Texas to miss the 2021 Summer Olympics.
"I know what I did," she told American broadcaster NBC.
Sha'Carri Richardson missed out on the Tokyo Olympics due to a postive test for cannabis
An elite athlete speaking publicly about drug use is about as common as England's national football team winning a penalty shootout. However, the fact that many athletes use cannabis or hemp products is an open secret. Longtime NBA player Matt Barnes is one former athlete to have spoken about his use of the substance.
"I would smoke cannabis six hours before a game. We'd have a shoot-around in the morning, I'd come home and smoke a joint, take a nap, shower, eat and go and play," he told the BBC in 2018. A certain odor
Since Barnes uttered those words, a certain odor has been swirling around US basketball players — to say the least. Taking to the court on a high? Is that not a prohibited way of enhancing one's performance?
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has announced that it is set to review whether cannabis remains on its list of banned substances. This follows requests from a number of "stakeholders" to review the status of cannabis on the Prohibited List, WADA spokeswoman Maggie Durand told DW.
However, at its recent executive committee meeting in Istanbul, WADA announced that no changes would be coming for 2022, meaning that the status quo will remain in place for the Winter Olympics in Beijing. This, WADA said, was due to the time required to conduct such a review.
Hemp products such as CBD oils are readily available without a prescription
Cannabis is the Latin word for hemp. And even the definition of the term and substance is somewhat complicated for the layman. After all, hemp products are freely available and are enjoying increasing popularity — in the form of CBD oils, for example. In 1999, the International Olympic Committee banned the use of cannabis from its competitions and WADA has gone along with the ban — at least so far. 'Endangering oneself and others'
According to the doping lexicon of the Institute of Biochemistry in Cologne, the use of cannabis "does not actually lead to an improvement in peak athletic performance." But the problem lies in another regard, as sports scientist Mario Thevis of the Center for Preventive Doping Research at the German Sport University in Cologne explained.
"First and foremost, what can be observed is the effectiveness of cannabinoids in limiting one's own risk assessment, that is, of the situation itself," the professor told DW.
"If a Formula 1 driver were to misjudge speed only minimally, he would endanger both himself and others. The same could apply to the skier who fails to recognize risks at enormously high speeds, which could be his undoing."
Mario Thevis of the German Sport University Cologne points to the drawbacks of athletes using cannabis
Proponents of cannabis legalization argue that the substance can be helpful in regeneration, muscle relaxation or pain reduction, in addition to its anxiety-relieving component.
This is countered by what the German Journal of Sports Medicine writes on the subject: "Although the physical effects of cannabis are relatively minor, the increase in heart rate and blood pressure can cause problems. There are known cases in which cannabis has caused or promoted cardiac arrhythmias, heart attacks, and probably strokes."
In order to convict athletes seeking to gain a competitive advantage, the doping offense limit has been raised to 150 ng/ml of urine, it adds.
"Athletes who smoke a joint now and then without intent to dope are thus protected." A clear head
For its part, Germany's National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) expressed confidence that WADA will take a decision on the issue while "taking into account the latest scientific findings."
So, it seems safe to assume that the researchers and officials on WADA's committees will be keeping a clear head.
Peru's coca farmers caught between drug gangs and starvation
Issued on: 23/09/2021
Peru is the world's second-largest producer of coca, after Colombia. About half of Peru's 49,000 hectares of coca plantations are found in the VRAEM valley
ERNESTO BENAVIDES AFP
Vizcatán del Ene (Perú) (AFP)
In an impoverished village in Peru's largest coca-growing region, Angelica Lapa mourns her 19-year-old son, killed four months ago by remnant Shining Path guerrillas who maintain a grip of terror over the forgotten region.
On May 23, a Sunday, armed men stormed the far-flung settlement of San Miguel del Ene -- population 300 -- and attacked two taverns, mowing down 16 people. Four were children.
Lapa's son Luis Fernando was among the victims.
"My son was innocent, humble. His death was very difficult for us," the 67-year-old said as she wept on the small farm where she ekes out a living growing mainly coca -- the leaf used to make cocaine.
The plant is much coveted by drug dealers the government says work in cahoots with Shining Path rebels -- a convergence of interests that places the community in constant peril.
This was not the first time Lapa -- her hands worn by many years of labor in the earth and sun -- had loved ones killed by Shining Path.
In the 1980s, at the height of Peru's war, she lost cousins, uncles and grandparents to the Maoist guerrillas fighting to overthrow the government.
After so much suffering, she told AFP, it was time for "the government to send the army to put pressure on those who have killed so many innocent people."
Shining Path is labelled a terrorist organization by Lima, the European Union and United States. - 'Comrade Jose' -
The government blamed the May 23 attack on a last active group of Shining Path guerrillas.
The attackers had left behind pamphlets warning the villagers, who live in extreme poverty in precarious wood and brick huts, not to vote for Keiko Fujimori -- then a candidate for presidential elections which have since been settled in favor of her rival Pedro Castillo.
Angelica Lapa with a photo of her son Luis Fernando, killed in the attack on May 23
ERNESTO BENAVIDES AFP
After being militarily overwhelmed in the 1990s, the vast majority of Shining Path leaders were arrested, and the movement has dwindled to just about 200 remaining fighters led by renegade commander Victor Quispe Palomino or "Comrade Jose"
They are active in the remote, mountainous valley formed by the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, though the Shining Path's original leaders do not recognize these fighters as members.
Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman died aged 86 at a maximum security prison on September 11, while serving a life sentence.
The sixteen victims of San Miguel del Ene are the latest on a long list of tens of thousands people killed in two decades of internal conflict from 1980 to 2000.
A tavern in San Miguel del Ene still bears the bloody evidence of a massacre of civilians blamed on Shining Path guerrillas
Ernesto BENAVIDES AFP
In the long-suffering VRAEM valley, so-called after the three rivers that form it, coca leaf cultivation is the only means of survival for many people in a place that does not even have sanitation or potable water.
The plant yields four times a year, making it more profitable than cacao, which is harvested only once a year, or lower-priced bananas.
"Economically, the leaf sustains us," Angelica's other son Roy, 35, told AFP. - Most grown for drugs -
Peru is the world's second-largest producer of coca, after Colombia. About half of Peru's 49,000 hectares of coca plantations are found in the VRAEM valley.
The plant is allowed to be grown for traditional use -- usually chewed or brewed in a tea and consumed as a stimulant or to counter altitude sickness.
But for the most part, the coca grown in the VRAEM is destined for the production of cocaine -- of which the United States is the world's largest consumer.
According to Peru's DEVIDA anti-drug commission, about 90 percent of the 120,000 tons of coca grown in the country every year ends up being used in illicit drugs -- only 12,000 tons are reserved for traditional consumption.
In 2019, before the global pandemic, one "arroba" (11.5 kilograms) of coca leaf sold for up to 200 soles, or about $60. It is now five to six times less
ERNESTO BENAVIDES AFP
In 2019, before the global pandemic, one "arroba" (11.5 kilograms) of coca leaf sold to drug traffickers for up to 200 soles, or about $60.
Now, they get five or six times less, coca growers told AFP.
"The pandemic ruined us economically because the price fell," said Roy.
Dina Manrique, 45, explained the locals had nowhere else to turn.
"There is no other product for us. Sometimes we grow cacao and we can't make a sale. We were selling to Enaco (the state coca company), now we have to sell to other people. I don't know what they will do," she said.
For as long as many people remember Colombia has been a violence riven country that has been a major hub in the global cocaine trade.What many people do not realize is that Colombia is one of Latin America’s largest oil producers. For the first seven months of 2021, Colombia pumped an average of 730,015 barrels per day, ranking it as the region’s third largest producer behind Mexico and then Brazil.
Over the last three decades Colombia has become increasingly dependent on petroleum to drive its economy, leaving it vulnerable to brutal price swings and the investment decisions made by big oil. Even during 2020 when oil prices plummeted because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic activity and a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, crude oil remained Colombia’s top export. During that year, petroleum was also responsible for 17% of the national government’s revenue and contributed around 3% of gross domestic product.
The importance of Colombia’s crude oil industry is rapidly rising because of Bogota’s focus on bolstering economic growth, after a year where the economy shrank nearly 7%, and filling a massive budget black hole with a deficit equal to nearly 9% of GDP.
The urgency with which Colombia needs to attract additional petroleum investment is emphasized by steadily rising prices, with the international Brent benchmark rising more than 50% this year and currently trading at over $75 per barrel. Ironically, while Colombia is pumping more petroleum than neighboring Venezuela, 731,255 barrels per day compared to 523,000 barrels, Colombia has paltry reserves totaling 1.8 billion barrels compared to Venezuela’s 304 billion barrels. This illustrates the urgency with which Bogota must act to attract substantial foreign energy investment while reducing the geopolitical risks faced by oil companies operating in Colombia.
A combination of rising insecurity, increased lawlessness, nationwide anti-government protests, sharply weaker oil prices, and the pandemic are all weighing heavily on investment and ultimately Colombia’s petroleum production. Last year oil industry investment plunged to $2.05 billion, its lowest level in over a decade, and even after oil prices rallied it is only forecast to be $3.2 billion for 2021, a marked 20.5% less than the $40.03 billion spent during 2019.
As a result, hydrocarbon production remains weak, well below the one million barrels once targeted by Bogota as being the optimal level to drive economic growth. Ministry of Mines and Energy data (Spanish) shows Colombia only pumped an average of 731,255 barrels per day during July 2021. This was 0.5% less than the same period a year earlier, at the height of the pandemic, when there were only six active drill rigs compared to 19 at the end of July 2021.
Source: Colombia Ministry of Mines and Energy, U.S. EIA.
There is a long way to go before Colombia’s economically crucial petroleum output returns to pre-pandemic levels. That could not occur at a worse time for a government battling to increase revenues, reduce inflation caused by a sharply weaker peso, and fund social programs to alleviate a marked uptick in poverty. Four-month-long nationwide anti-government demonstrations had a material impact on Colombia’s crude oil production causing the Andean country’s oil output to plunge to a multi-year low of 650,884 barrels per day by late May 2021.
These are not the only events weighing heavily on Colombia’s economically crucial petroleum industry. A significant uptick in violence and lawlessness across Colombia, particularly since 2018, is deterring investment and preventing the effective exploration of many remote parts of the country for the presence of hydrocarbons.
Colombia is enormously underexplored, with it estimated that less than a third of the Andean country has been examined for the presence of hydrocarbons, yet it possesses considerable potential. It is estimated that combined, Colombia’s 18 sedimentary basins possess potential hydrocarbon resources of 37 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which is more than twenty times greater than Colombia’s proven petroleum reserves. Only seven of those 18 sedimentary basins have commercial crude oil-producing operations. The primary reason for the lack of hydrocarbon exploration and presence of industry operations is Colombia’s long history of civil conflict with many petroleum-rich areas located in zones long dominated by armed non-state actors.Related: Crude Prices Jump On Oil Sands Outages
Bogota believed that the 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials) would open up large swathes of territory controlled by the leftist guerillas to oil exploration. This has not occurred because of a sharp uptick in violence and lawlessness since President Ivan Duque took power after defeating leftist candidate and senator Gustavo Petro in the 2018 presidential election. That, in part, can be blamed on Duque’s reluctance to effectively implement the FARC peace accord which is responsible for a growing number of dissident combatants who do not recognize the agreement.
Those dissident FARC groups are fighting among themselves as well as with the Marxist National Liberation Army (ELN – Spanish initials) and various paramilitary successor groups for control of lucrative coca cropping, illegal gold mining, and smuggling routes. At the end of 2020, it was estimated there were around 7,000 combatants comprising the various non-state armed groups operating in Colombia, with FARC dissidents and the ELN accounting for roughly 2,500 fighters each.
The remaining combatants were split across various paramilitary successor groups, the most prominent being the Gulf Clan. It is the massive profits generated by the production and trafficking of cocaine, which for decades has fueled Colombia’s multi-party low-level asymmetric conflict, that is estimated to have claimed around 220,000 lives. Control of coca cropping regions, with the leaves of the coca plant being the key ingredient needed to produce cocaine, is the primary driver of escalating violence. A historically weak state presence in many of the remote areas where coca growing occurs is further adding to the escalating conflict.
Those zones are also rich in crude oil, containing Colombia’s most important onshore sedimentary basins where most of the Andean country’s oil reserves and operational oilfields are. This includes the prolific Llanos Basin which forms the hub of Colombia’s onshore oil industry and contains the Rubiales field, which is found in the fifth-ranked coca-producing area.
The southern Putumayo Basin, one of the Andean country’s main producing sedimentary basins, is in Colombia’s fourth-largest coca cropping region. Much of the Andean country’s crude oil resources and key hydrocarbon-bearing geological formations are found in those basins. Crucial petroleum pipelines, the only economic means of transporting crude oil from points of production to coastal ports to access global energy markets, travel through Colombia’s main coca-growing regions.
The 210,000 barrel per day Caño Limon-Coveñas pipeline, which connects Colombia’s second-largest oilfield, Caño Limon, in the department of Arauca to the port of Coveñas passes through Cataumbo, which according to the UN is the Andean country’s second largest coca-growing region. It has frequently been the target of attacks by the ELN and FARC. The 190,000 barrel per day Transandino pipeline connecting oilfields in the Putumayo Basin passes through the Pacific region which the UN recently ranked as Colombia’s largest coca-growing area. Frequent pipeline outages due to sabotage also impact Colombia’s petroleum output, with drillers forced to shutter operations, once onsite storage reaches capacity, if those pipelines are out of operation.
Heightened conflict and lawlessness are deterring foreign investment in oil exploration and operations in those regions. Cocaine production is only climbing, with the UN coca cultivation survey indicating Colombia’s cocaine output during 2020 reached another record high of 1,228 metric tons, which was 8% greater than in 2019. This is significantly higher than Colombia’s cocaine output when the Medellin Cartel was at the height of its power during the 1980s.
Even the Duque administration’s focus on eradication and interdiction, which saw the volume of cocaine seized by authorities during 2020 rise by a notable 18% year over year, has made little inroads into what is a pressing problem for Colombia. The problem is so severe that cocaine profits are now estimated to be worth up to 4%, or $12 billion, of the Andean country’s GDP, which is more than the roughly 3% generated by crude oil. Such large amounts of funds will only further finance rising levels of conflict and attract additional violence from non-state armed actors seeking to expand their revenue. That will further deter urgently required foreign investment in Colombia’s economically crucial oil industry with low proven reserves of 1.8 billion barrels likely to run out in just over six years.
