For nearly a decade, the Antonio Ricaurte fuel pipeline—a 139-mile set up that cuts throughout Guajira, the northernmost peninsula in South America—has sat idle, a rusting image of decaying relations between Colombia and Venezuela, the 2 nations it connects.
Now, there are plans to revive the mission. This might give a significant increase to each economies however would have long-lasting implications for the area’s geopolitics, offering legitimacy to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian rule whereas diminishing Colombia’s vitality independence and limiting its foreign-policy choices towards its neighbor.
“PDVSA [Venezuela’s state oil firm] isn’t a dependable supplier, and any political issues will result in issues with provision of fuel to Colombia,” Juan Carlos Echeverry, a former Colombian finance minister, informed Overseas Coverage. “We’ve seen it occur with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Europe, and one thing related might occur between Colombia and Venezuela.”
For nearly a decade, the Antonio Ricaurte fuel pipeline—a 139-mile set up that cuts throughout Guajira, the northernmost peninsula in South America—has sat idle, a rusting image of decaying relations between Colombia and Venezuela, the 2 nations it connects.
Now, there are plans to revive the mission. This might give a significant increase to each economies however would have long-lasting implications for the area’s geopolitics, offering legitimacy to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian rule whereas diminishing Colombia’s vitality independence and limiting its foreign-policy choices towards its neighbor.
“PDVSA [Venezuela’s state oil firm] isn’t a dependable supplier, and any political issues will result in issues with provision of fuel to Colombia,” Juan Carlos Echeverry, a former Colombian finance minister, informed Overseas Coverage. “We’ve seen it occur with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Europe, and one thing related might occur between Colombia and Venezuela.”
For the reason that June election of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, relations with Venezuela have warmed quickly. On Jan. 1, the land border between the 2 nations was absolutely opened to two-way site visitors for the primary time in seven years. Six days later, Petro met with Maduro for the second time in Caracas. In keeping with a joint declaration, the leaders mentioned Colombia’s ongoing peace talks with Nationwide Liberation Military (ELN) guerrillas, commerce points, and joint infrastructure initiatives for vitality, connectivity, and industrial manufacturing. “Lengthy reside the union between Colombia and Venezuela!” Maduro tweeted.
The Antonio Ricaurte pipeline might be the central artery of that union. In November, Bloomberg reported that Venezuela had accredited a deal to export 25 million cubic ft of fuel per day to Colombia through the pipeline. On Jan. 5, Colombia’s state oil agency, Ecopetrol, confirmed that it had requested an exemption from the U.S. sanctions regime to obtain the fuel, below an analogous mannequin agreed upon in December between the U.S. authorities and Chevron that allowed the company to ship oil from Venezuela.
Reopening the pipeline might pose some technical challenges, based on Francisco Monaldi, director of the Baker Institute’s Latin American vitality program. “Whereas the Colombian stretch is more likely to have been maintained,” he stated, “the Venezuelan facet is more likely to have confronted the organized theft of apparatus and copper wiring that has affected different PDVSA infrastructure.” However with funding and political will, the mission is viable, he stated.
Such a deal would have been nearly unthinkable below earlier right-wing Colombian governments, however now, Caracas and Bogotá are extra ideologically aligned. Most analysts anticipate Maduro to chop a sweetheart deal, offering fuel at properly beneath present market charges. Whereas Venezuelan oil may be put in barrels and shipped world wide utilizing sanction-busting delivery firms, the fuel produced from these oilwells is commonly flared off as a result of there’s restricted infrastructure to retailer it and no liquefied pure fuel (LNG) terminal to export it to overseas markets. The Antonio-Ricaurte pipeline represents the one viable export market, though linking Venezuelan fuel fields to LNG terminals in Trinidad and Tobago is an alternative choice.
Low cost fuel would assist Colombian trade turn out to be extra aggressive and, with the border now open, native producers of textiles, metallic merchandise, and plenty of different gadgets would regain entry to a neighboring market that absorbed 37 % of exports in 2008, in comparison with 0.8 % final 12 months. By decreasing demand for home fuel, it could additionally permit Petro to make good on his election promise to finish new hydrocarbon exploration initiatives, even when he can be basically outsourcing extractivism to Venezuela. Lastly, the fuel might additionally present important feedstock for the PDVSA-owned Monómeros fertilizer plant positioned on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Colombia’s finance minister has signaled the nation’s intent to buy the plant as a method to make sure fertilizer safety for the nation, which might be a key step in wider agricultural reform.
“Colombia has a golden alternative,” stated Angel Castaneda, a Bogotá-based lawyer targeted on vitality regulatory points. “It requires stability on the border and in Caracas, however I believe it’s a wager Petro is true to take.”
Nevertheless, the transfer would reverse a 20-year coverage of selling home hydrocarbon exploration, which allowed Colombia to turn out to be self-sufficient in fuel and a significant oil exporter.
Throughout his marketing campaign, Petro didn’t point out the prospect of Venezuelan fuel imports. When his new minister of mines and vitality, Irene Vélez, talked about final August that Venezuelan imports might in the future be needed provided that Colombia might run in need of fuel in seven years, there was consternation from the native vitality sector. However a month later, Armando Benedetti, Colombia’s ambassador to Venezuela, doubled down. “The minister is mistaken. It’s good to do it now,” Benedetti stated. “You must foresee to be able to save. Seven years is nothing.”
The topic seems to have cut up the Colombian cupboard between its extra left-wing ministers and its extra reasonable ones, the latter of which incorporates the internationally revered finance minister, José Antonio Ocampo. In an October interview with Latin Finance, he stated: “The coverage of Colombia is self-sufficiency in fuel. The president has said that very clearly, so we’re not going to be importers of fuel.” In keeping with Bloomberg, the unique deal was signed in July, suggesting it had been ready with out Ocampo’s data.
Regardless, the deal is canny politics by Petro. His authorities stands to realize from the aforementioned advantages, whereas any downsides usually tend to accrue to his political opponents.
Within the close to time period, worldwide oil companies which have invested tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in exploring Colombia’s huge offshore and shale fuel reserves will now discover that their very own manufacturing prices can’t compete with Venezuelan imports. That is unlikely to concern Petro, who isn’t any buddy of the trade and has already demonstrated an urge for food that his predecessors lacked to confront large vitality firms together with his new windfall tax on oil and coal initiatives.
Of larger long-term concern for Colombia is the affect of changing into vitality depending on Maduro’s autocratic and unpredictable authorities.
“On the financial facet, [the deal] makes complete sense, however the geopolitical implications are actually far more advanced,” Monaldi stated. For greater than a decade, Bogotá and Caracas have clashed over the presence of ELN guerrillas in Venezuelan territory, alleged coup and assassination plots towards Maduro, smuggling and migration on the border, and Venezuela’s human rights file. Ought to such disputes happen sooner or later, Caracas can have a further financial weapon.
“At any second in time, [Caracas] might discover it politically worthwhile to curtail provide to acquire concessions from Colombia,” Echeverry stated. “That might restrict Colombia’s strategic and foreign-policy choices.”
Castaneda identified that below each former President Hugo Chávez and Maduro, items of Venezuelan oil (and the implicit menace of their suspension) had been used to affect United Nations voting patterns from Caracas’s Caribbean and Central American allies. “Petropolitics isn’t a brand new weapon—Venezuela is aware of the way to use it completely,” he stated.
Given the present heat relations between Petro and Maduro, it appears believable that future disputes might be settled cordially. Nevertheless, ought to a right-wing candidate take over the Colombian presidency in 2026, the issue of Maduro’s hand on the fuel spigot might turn out to be extra acute.
“In the event you’re a bureaucrat within the Ministry of Vitality, you’re involved concerning the ramifications of dependency on Venezuela,” Monaldi stated. “However from Petro’s perspective, it’s an issue extra for his adversaries in Colombia sooner or later than it’s for himself.”
And Maduro seems set to remain. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration has targeted on securing long-term sources of oil and stability in Venezuela reasonably than regime change. Though enhancements within the Venezuelan humanitarian program, in addition to free and truthful elections, had been situations of the Chevron export license, few analysts anticipate Maduro to comply with something that would danger his maintain on energy.
Colombians, too, are bored with instability in Caracas and really feel they pay the value when it comes to migration inflows, violence within the border areas, and the presence of ELN guerrillas on Venezuelan soil. As of final March, Maduro had a 91 % disapproval ranking in Colombia. If an alliance between Petro and Maduro can carry safety and financial development to the border areas, it could have a fabric affect on livelihoods, increase Petro’s recognition, and probably consolidate the left-wing shift in Colombian politics that he helped provoke.
However the historical past of the Antonio Ricaurte pipeline is a reminder of what can go mistaken. It was initially constructed to export fuel from Colombia’s extremely productive Ballena discipline to Venezuela with the promise that the circulation can be reversed as soon as fuel fields in Venezuela’s bay of Maracaibo got here on stream. However simply 5 months after its October 2007 inauguration, Maduro’s predecessor, Chávez, was incensed by Colombian navy operations towards Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas in Ecuadorian territory, which he deemed a violation of sovereignty. He took to his weekly TV present to publicly order his protection minister to ship 10 battalions to the Colombian border. Within the years that adopted, each nations pulled their embassy workers, the border was closed, and Chávez and then-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe “nearly got here to blows” at a summit in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010. In 2015, Colombia despatched its closing, lowered export of fuel. Venezuela by no means returned the fuel Colombia was due.