Colombia’s Oil Industry Eyes Comeback as $100 Crude Revives Investment Case

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith is Oilprice.com’s Latin-America correspondent. Matthew is a veteran investor and investment management professional. He obtained a Master of Law degree and is currently located…

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By Matthew Smith – Apr 24, 2026, 1:00 PM CDT

Colombia’s oil and gas production has fallen to multi-year lows due to regulatory changes, declining investment, and aging fields.
A sharp rise in oil prices above $100 per barrel could restore profitability and attract renewed exploration and drilling activity.
Structural challenges remain, including dwindling reserves, rising gas imports, and policy uncertainty impacting long-term energy security.

A shock oil price spike , after U.S. airstrikes on Iran, which sees Brent trading at over $100 per barrel, is giving hope of a recovery for Colombia’s beleaguered oil patch. Hydrocarbon production in the conflict-riven country is at multi-year lows , with adverse regulatory and tax reforms impacting investment in the economically critical sector. Nonetheless, higher oil prices and the prospect of a business-friendly candidate winning the 2026 presidential election offer a glimpse of hope for Colombia’s beaten-down oil industry.

February 2026 data from the hydrocarbon regulator , the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), shows Colombia lifted an average of 734,924 barrels per day. This is the lowest amount of petroleum produced since April 2025, when 714,229 barrels per day were extracted. That number is significantly lower than the 1,029,798 barrels per day pumped during February 2015, when the Brent had plunged to under $60 per barrel. For over a decade, a succession of conservative governments in the capital, Bogota, viewed oil production of one million barrels per day as key to fiscal stability.

Meanwhile, economically vital natural gas output remained weak. In February 2026, production hit an average of 695 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. This, despite being 1.8% higher than a month prior, is a worrying 15.7% lower than a year earlier. Indeed, the Andean country’s natural gas output is hovering around the lowest level in decades. This is particularly concerning because domestic demand for the fossil fuel is rising at a solid clip.

The ever-widening gap between natural gas supply and consumption is forcing Bogota to rapidly ramp up costly liquified petroleum gas (LPG). This is weighing heavily on an economy where natural gas is a key fuel for the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Consequently, the volume of LPG imported by Colombia continues to soar to new highs, with estimates indicating that between 2022 and 2025, shipments grew tenfold. During 2026, analysts anticipate that a quarter of all natural gas consumed in Colombia will be imported.

The key drivers of this sharp decline are policies enacted by Colombia’s first leftist president , Gustavo Petro. The former leftist guerrilla, on assuming office in August 2022, introduced reforms aimed at reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. These include banning hydraulic fracturing (a controversial, heavily regulated extraction technique in Colombia), ceasing to award new exploration licenses, and hiking taxes. Those measures triggered considerable uncertainty, seeing many drillers slash upstream spending while others, notably ExxonMobil, exited Colombia.

Petro’s numerous reforms and constant tax hikes for extractive industries, including the hydrocarbon sector, have severely damaged investor confidence, leading to a sharp decline in foreign energy investment. Those events are all responsible for a sharp decline in exploration activity. This places Colombia’s energy patch at risk because of the country’s l ow proven hydrocarbon reserves , which have a limited production life.

At the end of 2024, the Andean country’s proven oil reserves totaled just over 2 billion barrels, which is sufficient for another seven years of production. Meanwhile, proven natural gas reserves amounted to just over two trillion cubic feet with a production life of 5.9 years. Those numbers highlight the urgency required to boost exploration activities to lift hydrocarbon reserves to the point where Colombia can maintain its status as a net energy exporter.

The lack of exploration success, with no world-class discoveries since the 1990s, means drillers are operating aging mature wells, with most well beyond peak production. As a result, energy companies are forced to use enhanced recovery techniques to boost reservoir pressure and extract the remaining oil. This includes secondary recovery, where typically water flood is used to boost reservoir pressure and displace oil toward injection wells.

The fact that many of Colombia’s oilfields are mature, well and truly past peak production, means tertiary oil recovery is necessary if commercially viable petroleum extraction is to be maintained. Indeed, it is estimated that as much 80% of the Andean nation’s petroleum is produced from mature oilfields. Tertiary recovery is where drillers inject gas, usually carbon dioxide or natural gas, into reservoirs to boost pressure and act as a solvent that improves oil motility, leading to significantly higher recovery rates.

Drillers in Colombia typically reinject the natural gas produced as a byproduct of oil extraction. Indeed, it is estimated that around half of all associated natural gas produced is reinjected to boost recovery rates. This is sharply impacting the volume of domestically produced natural gas, which is made available for commercial consumption. The deployment of enhanced recovery is costly, with it estimated that it adds up to $20 per barrel, but it does increase the recovery factor by up to 20%.

The sharp spike in oil and natural gas prices currently being experienced because of the fallout from U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran may just be the catalyst required to drive greater investment in Colombia’s energy patch. You see, with Brent at around $100 per barrel oil industry operations in Colombia become profitable despite the additional taxes and regulatory restrictions imposed by the Petro administration.

The average industry-wide breakeven price is estimated to be $30 to $50 per barrel, meaning that at $100 Brent, even after allowing for the substantial tax expense imposed by Petro, operations are extremely profitable. At that price, drillers can easily absorb the additional costs created by using enhanced recovery techniques such as water flood and gas reinjection to pump petroleum from Colombia’s aging oilfields. This will be a boon for the Andean nation’s distressed hydrocarbon sector, driving greater exploration and drilling activity across existing contracts.

By Matthew Smith for Oilprice.com

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