Colombia’s Oil Industry Faces a Defining Election in 2026
Kansas Fed Pres Warns Oil Price Shock Might Not Be Transitory As Oilprice’s South America correspondent, I cover Colombia (where I currently live), Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname and Uruguay.
I… Colombia’s rapidly approaching 2026 presidential election is generating considerableconcern 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 policiesaimed 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 aban 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.
Asdata 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.
Themarked decline of Colombia’s single largest export, whichgovernment data showsearned $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.
This is behind the growing risk of aserious energy crisis emerging in Colombia, especially with thecountry increasingly dependent on liquified natural gas(LNG) imports, which exposes it to global geopolitical headwinds.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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