The Minister of Mines and Energy, Irene Vélez, It has stated on several occasions that in order to increase the reserves and production of natural gas and oil in Colombia, the focus will be on reactivating the 32 contracts that are currently suspended and on improved recovery.
By giving priority to these two fronts, there would be no need to award new contracts for exploration and production, according to the minister. However, from the Colombian Association of Oil and Gas (ACP) they assure that this would not be as viable as has been said and it would not give the expected results either.
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«The Ministry’s interest in seeing if the contracts that are suspended for various reasons can be reactivated is commendable, but they are contracts that reached the suspension stage because there were very deep reasons of public order and resistance of ethnic communities, among others,» said the president of the ACP, Francisco Jose Lloreda.
According to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, of the 32 suspended contracts 18 are due to social conflict (3 are in the process of prior consultation and the rest are suspended due to environmental regulations and situations with the communities), 10 due to public order and four due to procedures.
«If some of them are reactivated, this is going to take time. One cannot figure the future of exploratory activity in the country in those 32 contracts because we can get a surprise that is not pleasant«, sentenced the spokesman for the oil companies.
A detailed analysis carried out by the technical area of the ACP detected that in nine of these contracts the cause for suspension is the impossibility of carrying out any activity, due to the rejection and opposition of indigenous communities, while others obey reasons of public order. Therefore, a reactivation would not be achieved overnight.
Another problem, they say in the ACP, is that the areas where These contracts are located are areas in which, even, not even the public force can enter. So, waiting for a company to enter to do seismic or an exploratory process is easy.
«I have the impression that the country and the media have understood that if these 32 contracts are reactivated, we will solve the production problems after a few years. This would not be enough and at this time determine how many of these could be reactivated since at what rate is very difficult. The country could not encrypt or make plans about these supposed reactivations of those contracts ”, insisted Lloreda Mera.
Despite this, the companies that operate in Colombia are optimistic and expect produce 770,000 barrels of oil per day, which represents an increase of 2 percent compared to the 754,299 barrels reported in 2022.
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Is enhanced recovery feasible?
Another of the aspects on which the Government has centered its hopes to increase oil production in Colombia is improved recovery. At the moment, The country’s recovery factor is, on average, 21.7 percentwhile the international average is approximately 35 percent.
According to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, if the recovery factor is increased to 35 percent, it could be incorporated, in the long term, up to 12.9 billion additional barrels of oil«which is equivalent to adding up to six times the current proven oil reserves.»
However, from the ACP they assure that one of the great drawbacks of this technique is that requires more investment by companies in the sector, which on many occasions does not really compensate for the amount of oil that can be extracted.
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In addition, the strategies that have been used to increase the recovery factor have not been «very effective and Colombia has not been very successful in the goals it has set» with respect to this technique.
“Nor can it be, in the case of Colombia, to base the future on improved recovery. There has been great interest from companies, especially Ecopetrol, to see how the recovery percentage can be increased through secondary and tertiary recovery, and that is not easy,” added Francisco José Lloreda.
It is also important to take into account that it is not technically and economically viable to apply this technique in all areas or in all deposits. By 2023, the companies plan to invest in enhanced recovery 14 percent of the total production budget that is drawing in 3.810 million dollars.
