Colombian oil workers decide to strike

The USO, the largest labor union representing workers in the oil sector, decided on Wednesday to go on strike. The decision of exactly when the strike should begin was delegated to a special committee, but the strike must start no later than March 26^th. This date was not selected at random, as Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol’s board is meeting until March 26^th. The main reason for the strike is to protest the massive layoffs – USO president Edwin Castaño called them a “massacre of labor” – which have already affected some 10,000 oil sector workers.

Labor Minister Luis Eduardo Garzón said that a strike would be “suicide given the current situation. He added, “If there is a strike, it would not just affect Ecopetrol and employment, but also oil production in Colombia, which finances the government’s social programs like Families in Action, Greater Colombia, and victims programs.”

In mining-related news, the Colombian Minister of Mines and Energy, Tomas Gonzalez, told the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference in Toronto that Colombia intends to maintain its oil, gold, and coal production output in 2015 despite significantly lower global prices for these commodities. He added that it’s also vital that the country maintain exploration levels, a goal that will likely be impossible to fulfill.

In other news, Greenpeace demonstrated outside the Environment Ministry in Bogota dressed in biohazard suits. The Greenpeace activists were protesting the environmental damage to Colombia’s high-altitude paramos, specifically the Pisba paramo en the department of Boyaca, caused by mining. The activists called on the Environment Ministry to revoke the environmental permits given to Hunza Coal.