Strife-torn Colombia is dealing with an vitality disaster of gargantuan proportions. A long time of mismanagement and insecurity, coupled with radical modifications to vitality coverage by Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first-ever leftist president, are wreaking havoc with the nation’s pure fuel reserves and manufacturing. That is making the Andean nation more and more reliant upon expensive pure fuel imports whereas threatening the steadiness of Colombia’s vitality grid and risking important vitality shortages. There aren’t any indicators of a straightforward resolution for a rustic struggling below the load of a rising fiscal disaster.
Colombia’s confirmed pure fuel reserves are dwindling. Since 2012, when these reserves hit a multi-year excessive of 5.7 trillion cubic toes, they’ve fallen yearly aside from 2021. By 2024, Colombia’s pure fuel reserves stood at simply over two trillion cubic toes, almost a 3rd of what they had been in 2012, with a manufacturing lifetime of a mere 5.9 years. That is significantly worrying as a result of, for a similar interval when reserves declined, consumption of gas has risen sharply.
Supply: Colombia Nationwide Hydrocarbons Company (ANH).
Pure fuel is an important gas for Colombia’s gas-fired energy crops and households, which use it for heating and cooking. Till not too long ago, when the Andean nation’s self-sufficiency ended, pure fuel was a extremely inexpensive gas for households in a nation the place roughly a 3rd of the inhabitants lives in poverty. Colombia is changing into more and more reliant on pure gas-fired electrical energy era. Whereas the Andean nation has lengthy been reliant on hydropower, which gives round 60% of Colombia’s electrical energy, there’s a rising reliance on gas-fired crops. Rising electrical energy demand, coupled with sustained intermittent declines in hydroelectricity output on account of poor hydrology, elevated the necessity to generate energy from conventional thermal crops.
This, coupled with President Petro’s coverage of weaning Colombia off fossil fuels is behind the plan to interchange Colombia’s fleet of growing older, inefficient coal-fired crops. These are being progressively changed by pure gas-fired services by means of refits or the development of recent crops. Shortages of electrical energy attributable to modifications in water ranges, mixed with hovering demand and strained grid infrastructure, are liable for outages and brownouts in main cities and cities throughout Colombia. These occasions are inserting stress on constrained pure fuel provides, significantly with thermal services liable for producing over a fifth of Colombia’s electrical energy.
For these causes, demand for pure fuel is much outstripping provide. Home manufacturing of the fossil gas has fallen sharply since hitting a multi-year excessive of 1.1 billion cubic toes per day in February 2020, simply earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowledge from the nationwide hydrocarbon regulator, identified by its Spanish initials because the ANH, reveals for December 2025 a mere 693 million cubic toes of pure fuel was lifted in Colombia. That quantity is a whopping 9% decrease than November 2025 and a whopping 23% lower than a yr earlier.
Supply: Colombia Nationwide Hydrocarbons Company (ANH).
A key driver of this sharp decline in Colombia’s pure fuel output is the rising decline charges at mature fields. You see, a appreciable portion of the fossil gas lifted within the Andean nation is related fuel, a byproduct of oil manufacturing. The rising quantity of mature fields in Colombia, the place decline charges are peaking, means drillers are pressured to implement enhanced oil restoration strategies, similar to water flood and fuel injection methods.
Probably the most cost-effective enhanced restoration practices is to reinject the pure fuel extracted from oil wells into the underlying reservoirs to spice up stress and decrease viscosity, making the petroleum simpler to extract. It’s estimated that someplace between 50% an 80% of all related fuel produced in Colombia is reinjected for these causes. That is weighing on home commercially out there pure fuel volumes, with Bogota looking for commitments from drillers to release related pure fuel for commercialization.
For these causes, Bogota is ramping up expensive liquified petroleum fuel (LPG) imports, which started in 2016, to fill the shortfall. By 2024, Colombia was importing report volumes of LPG, setting each month-to-month and annual all-time highs. The Andean nation for that yr imported 94.33 billion cubic toes (BCF) or almost triple the 36.3 BCF acquired a yr earlier. In line with Bloomberg, these volumes proceed to develop. The information company not too long ago reported that in 2025, Colombia imported 3.1 million metric tons or 153.93 BCF of LPG, or 1.6 occasions greater than a yr earlier.
That marked uptick occurred regardless of the top of the El Niño climate phenomenon in 2024, which sparked a significant drought and was liable for a pointy discount in hydroelectricity era due to considerably decreased water flows. This pressured Bogota to fireside up gas-fired energy crops to make up for the shortfall in electrical energy, which threatened the steadiness of the nation’s grid. The quantity of LPG being imported by Colombia is forecast to develop additional because the hole between rising demand and plunging home provide widens.
Even the Sirius pure fuel undertaking located within the Andean nation’s territorial waters within the Caribbean, lengthy touted as an answer for diminishing reserves and manufacturing, is incapable of filling the provision hole. Latest forecasts anticipate provide constraints to weigh so severely on the quantity of pure fuel out there in Colombia that the deficit will widen to 56% of demand by 2029, if new home sources of the fossil gas usually are not introduced on-line. The rising dependence on expensive LPG imports is inflicting pure fuel costs to soar, which is impacting an already fragile economic system.
In line with authorities knowledge, a number of main cities, together with Colombia’s capital Bogota, skilled value inflation for pure fuel above the nationwide common. Colombia’s capital, whereas not the toughest hit noticed pure fuel costs surge by a worrying 16.98% within the December 2025 client value index. There are fears the rising reliance on imported pure fuel will drive costs larger, impacting financial exercise and households, that are already affected by a spiraling value of dwelling.
Nationwide oil firm Ecopetrol has pinned its hopes on the Sirius pure fuel discovery within the Guajira Basin located within the Caribbean Sea off the port metropolis of Santa Marta. The fuel subject is within the GUA OFF 0 Block, previously the Tayrona Block, the place Ecopetrol controls 55.6% with Brazil’s nationwide oil firm Petrobras, which is the operator, holding 44.4%. The undertaking, which is concentrating on reservoirs containing 6 billion cubic toes of pure fuel, will value $5 billion to develop. The Sirius fuel subject will come on-line by 2030. The block is believed to carry six trillion cubic toes of pure fuel, which, if correct, will considerably increase Colombia’s pure fuel reserves and manufacturing.
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