President Santos agrees: Colombian oil production will fall

On Wednesday, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos spoke with the press about the difficulties facing the Colombian oil industry. In what seasoned oil experts likely regard as stating the obvious, President Santos admitted that, “The big challenge is maintaining (the level of) production. It's going to be difficult to keep it at 1 million barrels (per day).”

He added that the collapse in global oil prices has hurt Colombia, explaining that, “The first thing that oil companies do in response to that revenue drop is to cut investment, cut exploration, and we need to adapt to this in whatever way we can in order to maintain the highest possible production.”

Juan Carlos Echeverry, president of state-owned oil company Ecopetrol, believes that Colombia should not write off the use of hydraulic fracturing in its quest to maintain oil production above 1 million bpd. He argued that Colombia does not have the luxury of not using fracking to extract as much oil as it can.

In addition to the problem of growing the country’s proven oil reserves, the Colombian oil industry continues to suffer from attacks on its infrastructure by leftist guerrilla groups in the country. Ecopetrol finally resumed pumping crude oil through the Caño Limón pipeline on Tuesday. The pipeline had been shut down for almost two months after several bombings in June, costing Ecopetrol and its partner Occidental Petroleum approximately 60,000 bpd in deliveries.