After a meeting of great kindness with President Gustavo Petro and The Minister of Mines, Irene Vélezthe intervention of the Deputy Minister of Energy, Belizza Ruiz, surprised.
“There will be no more exploration or exploitation of hydrocarbons. I don’t know what part of that sentence they haven’t understood.” he said at the beginning of his invention in a panel in which he shared with executives of the sector.
Ruiz, later, gave a more reassuring sentence in that scenario that brought together all the leaders of the gas sector. “Yes, we need the gas and we are going to use it,” he said.
“Yes, there are going to be projects that give us reliability to the gas system. (…) At no time are we going to deny relations with neighbors,” he clarified. As is known, there is great controversy in the country because with the Petro government’s announcement of no more gas exploration, the country would be at the gates of having to import from Venezuela when its reserves run out.
“We cannot define that we are going to depend on a gas from another country. Our attitude with the neighboring country will be one of dialogue. Making our energy system depend on a country does not make senseRuiz said. who also said that importing gas from Venezuela is not something new and that he considers that the proposal is unpopular because it comes from the neighboring country and that he believes that one should not “get involved with the issues.”
“We are not going to put the energy system at risk. The president and the Ministry are clear about the importance of gas, but we are not going to stop at the fact that gas is part of the transformation“, said. “We are not going to lose sovereignty of any kind. The relationship around gas will be commercial. We also have a regasification project”, declared the official.
The president of Frontera Energy, Orlando Cabrales, responded immediately.
“More natural gas exploration has to be,” he said. “Why don’t we focus on getting what we have and have discovered? The president of Ecopetrol has announced great discoveries in the Colombian Caribbean”he added.
“If we want to guarantee energy security, we have to go beyond what is contracted“, said. At that moment, the audience applauded him.
In the past, Belizza Ruiz also questioned “the curious appearances of gas” that have been reported recently. “Every year there is talk of a probability of having gas for the next few decades, but every year, when we do the math, what we have is gas for seven or eight years,” he said in recent days.
“We have spent decades with this myth that we have a lot of gas, Why has this gas that we have and that is so abundant in the Colombian subsoil not appeared in past decades or in the previous ministry?Where are those amounts of gas reserves in the subsoil that have never appeared?
Therefore, the deputy minister asked the sector be more “honest” about projections and take into account that the production of natural gas has social and environmental impacts on the territories. Furthermore, in the event that Colombia runs out of natural gas, The solution proposed by the deputy minister was to resort to imports from Venezuela and through two regasification plants.the first has been operating in Cartagena since December 2016 and the second is expected to be awarded in May 2023 to be built in Buenaventura.
For the president of Promigas, reliance on external sources of supply makes it very difficult to migrate to natural gas, a more environmentally friendly fuel. “If we continue to explore and produce our gas, we can also move faster towards that energy transition that we so desire”, he assured.