The Deputy Minister of Energy of Colombia, Belizza Ruiz, assured on Friday that her country will not have new hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation contracts, but pointed out that those that had been signed before the possession of Gustavo Petro will be respected, who assumed the Presidency on August 7.
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“There will be no new hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation contracts, but everything that came before, that had been signed, that had been carried out, will continue“, expressed the official to journalists during her participation in Congress 2022 of Naturgas.
He added: “In fact, what this signal tells the companies that are exploring and exploiting is that they make a greater effort to extract all the gas that the wells have. There is already an activity that continues, what happens is that people think that since there are no new contracts, the gas has run out”.
Colombia has natural gas reserves for seven years but the sector is in the midst of uncertainty due to the current government’s policy of curbing the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in the country, which, according to sector leaders, discourages investment.
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Criticism of the sectors
Former presidential candidate Sergio Fajardo, who was governor of the department of Antioquia and mayor of Medellín, said that Colombia must “walk quickly towards the energy transition, but to say that there will be no new exploration and exploitation contracts is wrong.”
“We must start from science, environmental care and the current economic perspective. Impromptu statements are irresponsible,” Fajardo, who was a candidate for the Centro Esperanza Coalition, said on Twitter.
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Senator Juan Pablo Gallo, of the Liberal Party, stated for his part that “an energy transition without hydrocarbons is not a transition or sustainable development.” “It is decrease. The deputy minister’s statements are very worrying. There is a lot of uncertainty and anguish about what they want to do with the country,” the congressman warned on his social networks.
Precisely the Minister of Mines, Irene Vélez, has been in the eye of the hurricane because proposed to import natural gas from Venezuela despite the fact that Colombia has reserves for at least seven more years, and then surprised with the theory of decrease. “
We also need to demand, within the framework of this global geopolitics, from other countries that they begin to decrease in their economic models because it depends on that decrease that we achieve a greater balance and that the impacts of climate change affect us less,” said the minister last month, sparking an avalanche of criticism
EFE
