Colombian president's statements on Gaza jeopardize close military ties with Israel

MANUEL RUEDA and ASTRID SUAREZ
Thu, October 19, 2023 






People attend a vigil coined "Palestine Lives," to show support for the Palestinians in the latest Israel-Hamas war, in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Escalating tensions between Colombia and Israel over the Gaza war could undo decades of close military ties between them and hamper Colombia’s ability to fight drug traffickers and rebels, security analysts say.

Israel has been one of Colombia’s main suppliers of war planes, surveillance equipment and assault rifles since the 1990s. But on Sunday its foreign ministry announced a suspension of defense exports to Colombia, after President Gustavo Petro refused to condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel and compared Israel's actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany.

Analysts in Bogota say that the suspension could jeopardize several contracts, including a $5 million deal between Colombia’s Defense Ministry and Israeli company IAI to maintain Colombia’s ageing fleet of Kfir fighter jets.

Colombia’s government also recently hired an Israeli company to outfit two Boeing 737’s with electronic warfare equipment and intelligence tools that can help the military jam communications of the nation’s remaining rebel groups and monitor their movements.

Israel’s embassy in Bogota declined to answer questions about the export ban and whether it applies to contracts that have already been signed.

Security analysts in Bogota said that if the ban is sustained, it could seriously affect Colombia’s armed forces due to their reliance on Israeli hardware and technology.

“It will be debilitating and extremely costly,” said Jorge Restrepo, the director of CERAC, a security think tank in Bogota. “It can take months or years to find new providers and to train personnel to use and trust new equipment.”

Colombia deepened its military ties with Israel in the late 80’s by purchasing a group of Kfir fighter jets. The war planes, whose name translates to young lion, are able to launch laser-guided bombs.

They were used by Colombia’s air force in numerous attacks on remote guerrilla camps that debilitated the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and helped push the group into peace talks that resulted in its disarmament in 2016.

But as Colombia’s fleet of 22 Kfir fighter jets becomes older it also relies more frequently on maintenance from its Israeli manufacturers, said Erich Saumeth Cadavid, a Colombian defense analyst.

Cadavid noted that one potential result of the export ban could be less sorties for the Kfir planes, which are Colombia’s only fighter jets and also the only planes in the nation’s arsenal that are capable of launching bombs with precision.

Colombian officials have been slow to replace the fleet despite offers from manufacturers in France, Sweden and the United States, as Petro’s administration prioritizes spending in other areas.

Israel’s military export ban comes as Colombia’s government continues to face the threat of rebel groups that did not join the 2016 peace deal with the FARC, and have grown stronger in some rural parts of the country following the FARC’s withdrawal from these areas.

Petro’s administration recently signed cease-fires with two of these groups — the ELN and the EMC -- that will expire early next year, while it is fighting against the drug trafficking group known as the Gulf Clan, which is the nation’s second largest armed group.

Wilder Alejandro Sánchez, a military analyst and president of Second Floor Strategies, a consulting firm based in Washington, said that the effects of Israel’s export ban will take some months to be felt by Colombia’s armed forces.

He said that while Colombia has a “diverse” set of weapons in its arsenal, including Brazilian made Super Tucano planes that can attack enemies on the ground, the nation relies heavily on Israel for the maintenance of surveillance equipment, including drones.

“Colombia continues to face a plethora of internal security challenges, and they need a strong military with various capabilities” Sánchez said. “So this ban, if it really does come through, comes at a really bad time.”

Another contract that could be jeopardized by the ban, Sánchez said, is a license through which Colombia’s state owned military factory, Indumil, produces Israeli designed Galil assault rifles, which have become the principal weapon used on the ground by Colombian troops.

Following Israel’s announcement of its intent to suspend military exports, Colombia's leftist president threatened to cut diplomatic relations with Israel and blamed the country for the growth of paramilitary groups in Colombia, though he didn't provide evidence for that claim.

“If we must suspend relations with Israel, then that is what we will do,” Petro wrote on the social media platform X. “From the people of Israel I demand help for the construction of peace in Colombia, in Palestine and in the world.”

Petro, who was once a member of a left-wing rebel group that made peace with Colombia's government in the 1990s, has written dozens of messages on X about the war in Gaza since the conflict began on October 7.

In some, he has compared the conditions in the Gaza strip to those of a concentration camp, and in other messages he has written that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is equivalent to “genocide.”

But the president has refused to condemn Hamas' attack on Israel, despite numerous calls by Colombian politicians and intellectuals for him to do so.

While Petro’s supporters commend him for speaking forcefully about the plight of Palestinians, critics are worried that his brand of online diplomacy could eventually lead to a complete rupture of relations with Israel, and undermine Colombia's relations with other countries.

“By not condemning the terrorist attack, he is drifting away from Colombia's strategic allies and putting Colombia next to the nations that support terrorism,” said Diego Molano, a former Colombian defense minister.

“Petro is impulsive and he sees in the Palestinian cause something that he can become a vocal supporter of that aligns with his ideology and his passion for anti-colonialism,” said Sergio Guzmán, a political risk analyst in Bogota. “But he is not taking Colombia’s interests into consideration, and it puts Colombia in a difficult position.”

On Thursday afternoon Petro held separate meetings with the ambassadors of Israel and Palestine and posted photos on X. He announced Colombia would send humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza strip and wrote on his account that he had told both ambassadors about his desire to help set up an “international peace conference that opens the path for two free and independent states.”

Israel suspends defense sales to Colombia
José Higuera
Wed, October 18, 2023 

RAUL ARBOLEDA

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Israeli government has suspended all sales and supplies of defense and security hardware and related services to Colombia.

The move followed a heated exchange on X, formerly known as Twitter, between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Israeli Ambassador in Bogota Gali Dagan about the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip.

Petro had refused to condemn the Hamas raid. When Dagan urged Petro to speak about the attack on Israel, Colombia’s president replied with a message that “terrorism is killing innocent children in Palestine” and followed up with messages in which he accused Israel of turning Gaza into a “concentration camp.”

Petro doubled down on his criticism of Israel over the weekend, describing its military campaign in Gaza as “genocide” and threatening to break off relations with the Jewish state.

“If we must suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, then that is what we will do,” he wrote on X on Sunday. “You cannot insult the president of Colombia.”

Ultimately, Israel called Colombia’s ambassador to a meeting in which she was informed that defense cooperation between the countries would be suspended, the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a news release.

Colombia’s Defense Ministry did not reply to Defense News’ request for comment.
Defense relations

Colombia has had a close relationship with Israel, with the former having acquired military hardware and security equipment from the latter for decades. But relations chilled after Preto became president in August 2022.

Emilio Meneses, an independent security analyst based in Santiago, told Defense News the president’s “outburst of criticism against Israel, which could have been expressed in a more appropriate language and through proper diplomatic channels, is helping neither the Palestine people nor Colombia. Quite the opposite.”

Colombia has plans to acquire the Barak MX air defense system, made by Israel Aerospace Industries, to meet a requirement for protecting deployed personnel and strategic facilities.

The Colombian Air Force’s primary fighter jet and only high-performance combat aircraft is also made by IAI. The service has an estimated 24 Kfir fighters. Technical problems involving their General Electric J79 turbojet engines led to the Air Force grounding its Kfir entire fleet in 2015.

Restoring the fleet required involvement from IAI, which has historically provided extensive maintenance services, in both Colombia and Israel. In January 2023, the parties renewed the contract for these services until 2025.

The Kfir jets are also armed with weapons acquired from Israel, including the Derby BVR medium-range air-to-air missiles from Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Griffin laser-guided-bombs from IAI.

And the Kfirs use Python III and Python IV all-aspect, heat-seeking, close-range air-to-air missiles, made by Rafael. Those weapons are also used for the service’s A-29 Super Tucano turboprop aircraft.

The main infantry rifles in use with the Colombian military are the Israel Weapons Industries-made 5.56mm Galil automatic rifle machine gun and 7.62mm Galil sniper rifle. Since the 1980s, they were produced in Colombia under license by the state-owned concern INDUMIL, which has exported these weapons to other countries in South and Central America. Colombia has started to replace the Galil weapons with the newer Galil ACE infantry rifle, made locally by INDUMIL under license from IWI.

The Spike weapon from Rafael is the main anti-tank missile in the Colombian Army’s inventory, while the Sikorsky UH-60 Arpia IV ground-fire support helicopters from the Air Force are armed with ER, LR and NLOS versions of the same weapon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Super El Niño Could Push Colombia Into an Energy Crisis

By Matthew Smith - Jul 07, 2026

• Colombia is becoming increasingly dependent on costly LNG imports as domestic natural gas production and reserves continue to decline.
• 
  
• A potential Super El Niño could reduce hydroelectric generation, increasing demand for gas-fired power and pushing energy prices even higher.
• 
  
• Rising gas costs, inflation, fiscal pressures, and weakening domestic production are creating significant economic and energy security risks.
• 
  

Scientists predict 2026 will bring a devastating Super El Niño weather event, with rising temperatures and economically damaging droughts expected. There are fears the climate pattern will hit Colombia especially hard, triggering severe droughts that lower water levels and sharply reduce hydroelectric power generation. This will significantly pressure Colombia’s thermal power plants, already constrained by a natural gas shortage, while straining the electricity grid. As a result, costly natural gas imports will rise, adding pressure to Colombia’s fragile, fiscally strained economy.

Colombia first began importing natural gas in December 2016. Since then, the volume of liquified natural gas (LNG) shipments soared higher, despite rising prices. For 2025, it is estimated that around 18% of all natural gas consumed in Colombia that year was imported. Already for 2026, that number is ballooning out at a worrying rate. While earlier calculations predicted that around a quarter of Colombia’s natural gas would come from overseas, that amount has blown out to over 32% and is expected to climb further.

As a result, natural gas prices across Colombia are soaring, with LNG imports significantly more expensive than domestically produced dry gas. Between 2022 and 2024, prices surged by 36%, and despite attempts to mitigate the risks associated with rising natural gas imports, they continue to rise. Industry analysts estimate that natural gas prices in Colombia will rise by as much as 25% during 2026, further impacting businesses and households, with a spiraling cost-of-living crisis emerging.

This, in turn, will fuel further jumps in the inflation rate, which is already at a multiyear high. These developments are weighing heavily on an already fragile economy, which is fiscally vulnerable with the budget deficit at near historic highs of 6.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of 2025. It is anticipated it will blow out to 6.6% during 2026, which will make Colombia’s fiscal deficit the world’s third-largest.

Costly liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports are driving inflation higher, pushing up business and household costs because it is an essential commercial and domestic fuel. According to the government statistics agency DANE, Colombia’s monthly inflation rate hit 0.47% for May 2026, which translates to 5.84% on an annual basis. That marks the highest rate since 2024, when inflation was still easing after reaching a record 12.36% in 2023, driven by excess pandemic stimulus and a global price surge linked to COVID-19 lockdowns.

Colombia’s growing dependence on natural gas imports arose because of a marked decline in domestic production along with dwindling reserves of the essential fossil fuel. During April 2026, Colombia pumped 694 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, which was nearly 1% lower month over month and a worrying 15% less than a year earlier. That number is 36% lower than a decade earlier, underscoring the steep production decline of this economically vital fossil fuel from a period when Colombia was self-sufficient.

The decline is largely due to a lack of new discoveries and a substantial drop in output from Colombia’s Chuchupa and Ballena fields in the offshore La Guajira Basin. Production from the Chuchupa peaked in 2010, with over 90% of all recoverable hydrocarbons now extracted. The field will reach its economic limit in 2027, now accounting for a mere 1% of Colombia’s total natural gas output. Ballena’s output peaked in 2014, with production expected to continue until 2039, when analysts forecast that economically recoverable natural gas will be depleted.

These factors are responsible for declining production and a widening supply gap that will worsen if El Niño arrives in Colombia during the second half of 2026. Recent news that Colombia’s proven reserves of the essential fossil fuel have fallen again heightens the risks to its natural gas-dependent economy. According to Colombia’s petroleum regulator, the National Hydrocarbon Agency (ANH), proven natural gas reserves at the end of 2025 fell 17% year over year to 1.717 trillion cubic feet.

Source: National Hydrocarbon Agency (ANH).

This represents an 18-year low, with growing fears that Colombia’s proven natural gas reserves will continue to decline.

President Gustavo Petro’s short-sighted energy policies, which focus on significantly reducing Colombia’s dependence on fossil fuels, are a disaster for the country’s oil patch. Petro is Colombia’s first-ever left-wing president who, upon taking office on August 7, 2026, implemented a series of policies aimed at maximizing the benefits delivered by oil extraction while reducing dependence on fossil fuels. This included banning new exploration and production contracts, weighing heavily on drilling activity and foreign energy investment.

That is a key reason for the lack of new oil discoveries in Colombia, where there has not been a world-class discovery since the 1990s. This continues to weigh on the country’s hydrocarbon reserves. Petro’s decision to frequently hike taxes for energy companies and attempt to ban hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, further contributed to the growing malaise in Colombia’s oil patch. Those policies, particularly regular tax hikes, saw many drillers operating in Colombia sharply slash spending in the country.

Some energy companies, like Exxon, chose to exit the country, seeing greater opportunity, security, and returns from any investment in other nearby countries, such as Guyana. Those developments are heavily impacting Colombia’s hydrocarbon production and reserves. The sharp impact of Petro’s regulatory and tax reforms on Colombia’s oil industry is magnified by rising lawlessness and violence in remote regions where many energy operations are located. 

Since Petro took office, illegal armed groups have expanded their ranks, using his “total peace” policy as an opportunity to extend their territory, number of recruits and operations. Colombia’s security agencies estimate there are 22,000 members of various illegal armed structures across the country have 22,000 members. This is significantly greater than the 15,000 members reported for 2022 when Petro assumed office. This, along with rising coca cultivation and cocaine production, is responsible for a sharp uptick in violence in many rural regions.

Colombia’s growing dependence on ever-larger volumes of costly imported natural gas presents a considerable risk to a fragile economy, already buffeted by structural issues and serious headwinds. This will not only drive inflation higher, forcing Colombia’s central bank to keep interest rates higher for longer, but it will also negatively affect industry and agriculture, where natural gas is an important low-cost source of energy. There is also the very real risk of a sharp drop in electricity supply, further impacting the economy.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

Colombia’s Oil Industry Faces a Defining Election in 2026

By Matthew Smith - May 29, 2026

• Colombia’s oil and natural gas production has fallen sharply under Petro-era policies that halted new exploration contracts and discouraged investment.
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• Left-wing candidate Iván Cepeda supports a continued energy transition, while right-wing candidates Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia advocate expanding hydrocarbon production and allowing fracking.
• 
  
• The election outcome could determine whether Colombia deepens its shift away from fossil fuels or seeks to revive domestic energy production to strengthen energy security and economic growth.
• 
  

Colombia’s rapidly approaching 2026 presidential election is generating considerable concern about the economy, notably the country’s oil industry. Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla who won the 2022 election to become Colombia’s first left-wing president, introduced policies aimed at reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. While this spurred the development of renewable energy, it is responsible for sparking an energy crisis in Colombia. There is hope that a new president will revive Colombia’s economically vital oil industry by delivering a more sustainable energy policy.

Key among the policies implemented by Petro was a ban on issuing new exploration and production contracts, significantly hiking taxes, and attempting to legally prohibit hydraulic fracturing in Colombia. Those decisions are responsible for a sharp decline in the Andean country’s hydrocarbon output. As data from Colombia’s regulatory authority, the National Hydrocarbon Agency (ANH), shows, oil and natural gas output is at or close to historical lows. By March 2026, the country was lifting 740,497 barrels per day, well below the 917,210 barrels produced daily for the same period a decade earlier.

Source: ANH and author’s own work.

The marked decline of Colombia’s single largest export, which government data shows earned $12.5 billion during 2025, is endemic of the headwinds impacting a fiscally fragile, debt-laden economy.  Among the hardest hit by the marked long-term decline of Colombia’s hydrocarbon sector, and Petro’s policies, is natural gas. ANH data shows that the March 2026 output of 700 million cubic feet per day, despite climbing nearly 1% month over month, is at the lowest levels in decades.

Source: ANH and author’s own work.

This is behind the growing risk of a serious energy crisis emerging in Colombia, especially with the country increasingly dependent on liquified natural gas (LNG) imports, which exposes it to global geopolitical headwinds. Indeed, only a decade ago, Colombia was largely self-sufficient when it came to natural gas, with domestic production generally keeping up with demand. That, however, began to worsen as domestic supply plummeted, forcing Bogota to begin importing LNG in December 2016.

Today, natural gas shipments supply over a fifth of the fuel consumed in the Andean nation. This will only worsen as domestic natural gas production and reserves, which are at a trillion cubic feet, continue to decline. There are fears Ivan Cepeda, the continuation candidate for President Petro and his Pacto Historico, will continue with current government policies that are sharply impacting Colombia’s energy patch.

At an April 2026 campaign rally in Barrancabermeja, the capital of Colombia’s energy patch, Cepeda said: 

"The country requires a comprehensive energy policy that diversifies the economy and avoids dependence on hydrocarbons,"  

He did, however, temper that statement by pointing out that it will involve a gradual transition to renewable sources of energy rather than an immediate dismantling of the hydrocarbon sector.

During early May 2025, Cepeda rounded out his position, stating he will work to transition the agricultural sector into Colombia’s main economic engine while moving the country away from its historical dependence on extractive industries. Cepeda went on to say mining and energy exploitation is an exhausted economic model and that "Colombia will not be a country of commodities."

With the senator leading in the polls, his economic policy is weighing heavily on Colombia’s economy and the Andean country’s oil patch. If Cepeda emerges victorious, then oil and natural gas production will continue its downward decline, with foreign energy investment set to fall further. Indeed, there are concerns that the few remaining drillers operating in Colombia will not only dial down investment but also exit the country in a manner like Big Oil exiting after Petro’s victory.

Behind Cepeda in the polls is wildcard far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, a high-profile criminal attorney who usually resides in Miami. A tremendous part of his platform is focused on security and public order. Initially, this will be achieved by militarizing Colombia while simultaneously ending Petro’s failed policy of total peace, which left illegal armed groups in a stronger position. Greater security in the country bodes well for the energy patch, with upstream facilities located in many remote regions where illegal armed groups pose a hazard to operations.

De la Espriella intends to reinvigorate Colombia’s hydrocarbon sector, prioritizing energy sovereignty over the clean energy transition. He supports hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, which has long been a controversial hydrocarbon extraction technique in the Andean country. Colombia’s highest court rejected the operation of fracking in Colombia and placed a moratorium on its use.

De la Espriella also proposes the awarding of new hydrocarbon exploration and production contracts, the banning of which is a key driver of the recent collapse in production. This will reinvigorate Colombia’s oil patch to the point where it will once again become a key contributor to the economy and De la Espriella’s goal of 7% annual growth of gross domestic product (GDP).

At third place in the polls is right-wing candidate Paloma Valencia, the protégé of President Alvaro Uribe and a long-time senator who is a member of his Democratic Center party. It was during Uribe’s eight years in office, from 2002 to 2010, that Colombia’s oil industry was transformed into a major economic driver with the restructuring of national oil company Ecopetrol and its listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Valencia’s energy policy resembles that which existed during the presidency of her mentor Uribe and then under Juan Manuel Santos Calderón and Iván Duque Márquez. Valencia supports the exploitation of fossil fuels with plans to lift oil production to one million barrels per day, the volume long targeted by Bogota to balance the budget. The candidate believes fracking, conducted in an environmentally responsible manner, is a solution for Colombia’s dwindling hydrocarbon reserves and production.

Under Valencia’s leadership, Colombia will see a reinvigorated hydrocarbon sector with oil and natural gas production rising from recent lows if she wins office. Valencia’s vice-presidential candidate, Juan Daniel Oviedo, in an interview with El País, said;

“We will reactivate the exploitation of fossil fuels, and we will promote fracking with environmental responsibility, but also with a lot of innovation".

Reactivating the exploitation of fossil fuels in Colombia will boost the country’s energy security and the stability of the electricity grid. That will support a planned foray into energy-intensive data centers, which support the development of artificial intelligence.

Valencia, like De la Espriella, will end Petro’s policy of total peace, which failed dramatically, leading to an escalation of internal conflict. She will instead focus on bolstering security by recruiting 30,000 additional police and adding 30,000 new military personnel, which will be used to secure remote regions where the government’s presence is weak.

A Cepeda victory bodes poorly for Colombia’s beaten-down hydrocarbon sector, with the presidential hopeful set to continue with energy policies like those implemented by the current president, Gustavo Petro. While much of the rhetoric around promoting the development of renewables and weaning Colombia off a deep dependence on fossil fuels makes sense in a global context, it creates considerable economic and geopolitical risks.

There are fears that Colombia is on the cusp of an energy crisis, with plunging natural gas production impacting the economy and threatening the stability of the electricity grid. With imported natural gas comprising an ever-greater proportion of supply, there will be a sharp impact on an already fragile economy, where annualized inflation spiked to a worrying 5.68% for April 2026. A victory by either right-wing candidate will benefit Colombia’s oil industry and business in general. It will lead to greater security, notably in remote rural regions where the petroleum industry operates, while forging a more industry-friendly regulatory environment.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

Cocaine, Guns And Gushers: Colombia’s Oil Industry Struggles To Reactivate

By Matthew Smith - Dec 26, 2021

• Rising security risk and rural violence, which is mostly fueled by the vast profits generated by the cocaine trade, is a key deterrent to attracting onshore oil investment in Colombia.
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• According to the UN, Colombia’s cocaine production during 2020 increased by 8% compared to a year earlier, despite a 7% decrease in the volume of land used for coca cropping. 
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• Despite the risks associated with operating in onshore Colombia, the Andean country’s 2021 bid round found some success.

Despite the groundbreaking 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the largest guerilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials) there are fears that conflict is escalating once again. Colombia, which is Latin America’s third-largest petroleum producer and the world’s largest manufacturer of cocaine for nearly a century, has been caught in a simmering low-intensity asymmetric conflict that reached boiling point during the 1980s. The primary flashpoint for the civil conflict, which currently engulfs Colombia and failed to end with the 2016 FARC peace accord was the April 1948 assassination of Liberal Party leader Jorge Gaitan in Bogota. That sparked the Bogotazo, days of violent rioting that swept across Bogota resulting in up to 3,000 deaths, which eventually evolved into a vicious 10-year civil war between the Colombian Liberal and Conservative parties known as La Violencia. While that brutal struggle ended in a 1958 power-sharing agreement between Colombia’s leading political parties, it sowed the seeds for the current low-intensity multiparty asymmetric conflict.  In 1964 the Colombian Communist Party formed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials) after a military attack on the community of Marquetalia, a Communist peasant enclave established during the of La Violencia. That event saw the communist FARC emerge as the most powerful left-wing anti-government armed group during the conflict. The guerillas eventually cut ties with the Colombian Communist Party and increasingly relied upon kidnapping, extortion, and cocaine trafficking to fund their operations. Prior to these events, which cast Colombia into what appears to be a never-ending low-intensity asymmetric multiparty civil conflict, oil was discovered in 1918 at the La Cira-Infantas field in the Middle Magdalena Basin near the city of Barrancabermeja. Even after additional petroleum discoveries in the Middle Magdalena Basin, it was not until the giant Caño Limon, Cusiana, and Cupiagua oilfields were discovered between 1983 and 1993 that Colombia embarked on becoming a major oil producer. Those mega discoveries and a notable increase in foreign energy investment, as well as petroleum production, occurred despite violence surging because of the tremendous influx of profits from the booming cocaine trade.

Even the tremendous escalation of violence, homicides, kidnappings, and attacks on energy infrastructure which escalated in the late-1980s, lasting well into the early 21st century, had little material impact on Colombia’s hydrocarbon sector. By 1991 Colombia was pumping over 400,000 barrels per day, more than double its output in 1985, despite becoming the world’s murder capital with a homicide rate of 84 intentional killings per 100,000 people. That was more than eight times greater than the U.S. which reported 9.8 homicides per 100,000 head of population, 7-times higher than neighboring Venezuela’s murder rate of 12 and 8-times larger than Ecuador’s 11 homicides per 100,000 people.

Heightened insecurity and violence remained a persistent problem in Colombia, even after the collapse of the Medellin and Cali cartels, as the FARC and National Liberation Army ELN (Spanish initials) ramped-up operations as vast revenue flowed in from the drug trade. By 2000, after President Andres Pastrana’s peace negotiations with the FARC had failed, the leftist guerillas controlled a 42,000 square mile territory in southeastern Colombia and kidnappings had surged to a record high of 3,500 for the year. Even those events failed to have any material impact on Colombia’s oil boom. A combination of soaring oil prices and rapidly improving internal security during the early 2000s, because of Plan Colombia and President Alvaro Uribe’s military campaign against the FARC, saw foreign energy investment and hence crude oil production growth.

During 2003 when Brent averaged $28.83 per barrel, a 15% increase over 2002, Colombia pumped an average of 550,000 barrels of crude oil per day. When Brent had soared to over $140 per barrel during 2008, annual petroleum production averaged 600,000 barrels daily and kept growing to peak at a yearly record of just over 1 million barrels per day by 2013. Since 2016 Colombia’s petroleum output has been in terminal decline impacted at first by the late-2014 oil price crash, sharply rising violence, and finally because of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Even the 2017 demobilization of the largest leftist guerilla group the FARC, after a 2016 peace agreement was struck with the government of President Juan Manuel Santos, has done little if anything to arrest Colombia’s production decline. That in part can be blamed on current President Ivan Duque’s reluctance to fully implement the peace deal, contributing to an increase in violence and civil unrest in regional Colombia.

Related: Southeast Asia’s Oil And Gas Output May Never Recover To Pre-COVID Levels

During 2020, the crisis-driven Andean nation only pumped on average 781,300 barrels of crude oil per day as the COVID-19 pandemic, related national quarantine lockdown and sharply weaker oil prices impacted investment as well as production. More worrying, is that despite the pandemic lockdown ending by September 2020 and energy investment increasing, average petroleum output only reached 734,231 barrels per day for the first 10 months of 2021 which is 6% less than the full year 2020. That disappointing decline occurred because of heightened civil unrest with anti-government protests sweeping across Colombia during late- April 2021 lasting into May and early-June 2021. Falling crude oil output can also be attributed to rising insecurity in regional areas, where petroleum industry operations are concentrated, fueled by a marked uptick in violence related to the activities of illegal armed groups and cocaine production.

It is the cocaine trade that is an enduring problem for Colombia. The tremendous profits that the trade generates are responsible for fueling what is a near-perpetual low-level asymmetric conflict where only the illegal armed actors change as the various groups fragment and reform. Estimates vary, but Colombia’s government believes the civil conflict has claimed up to 260,000 lives and displaced at least 9 million people. According to the UN Colombia’s cocaine production during 2020 increased by 8% compared to a year earlier, despite a 7% decrease in the volume of land used for coca cropping and an 18% increase in seizures. The scale of massive profits generated by cocaine is highlighted by former finance minister Juan Carlos Echeverry’s estimate (Spanish) that the drug trade generates $8 to $12 billion annually, which is equivalent to 5 to 4% of Colombia’s gross domestic product. Using Echeverry’s numbers the cocaine trade is contributing the same amount, if not more, to Colombia’s GDP than the oil industry which based on DANE data (Spanish) for the first 3 quarters of 2021 was responsible for 3% of GDP.

Rising security risk and rural violence, which is mostly fueled by the vast profits generated by the cocaine trade, is a key deterrent to attracting onshore oil investment in Colombia. A combination of security risks and mature assets saw Occidental Petroleum, in October 2020, sell its Colombian onshore petroleum assets in an $825 million deal, although the company retained its offshore exploration blocks. Despite the risks associated with operating in onshore Colombia, the Andean country’s 2021 bid round found some success. Seven companies made offers for 30 of the 53 blocks (Spanish) on offer with initial investment expected to exceed $148 million. Five of the offers came from national oil company Ecopetrol or its subsidiaries and 21 from intermediate energy companies with existing operational presence in Colombia, Parex Resources, Frontera Energy, and Canacol Energy. This indicates that Colombia is struggling to attract foreign onshore energy investment because of the heightened security risks coupled with high breakeven prices and elevated carbon content of the sour heavy crude oil produced.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com