Colombian oil pipeline hit every four days in 2018

Colombia´s Cano Limon-Covenas crude pipeline has been attacked on average every one out of four days in the year through 10 November, confirming a sharp rise from the preceding three years, according to Argus calculations based on data from state-controlled Ecopetrol.

In the year to date, the 220,000 b/d pipeline has been attacked 78 times, compared with 62 strikes in all of 2017, 42 in 2016 and 22 in 2015.

The latest strike took place on 10 November in Cedeno, Toledo municipality in Norte de Santander department. The line had just been attacked two days before on 8 November, in Cubara municipality in Boyaca department, Ecopetrol reported.

The data does not include numerous illegal valves put in place by drug traffickers that use the stolen oil to process coca. Attacks and clandestine taps are also a mainstay of the 85,000 b/d Transandino crude pipeline in southern Colombia that transports crude to the Pacific port of Tumaco. The pipeline attacks are a decades-old phenomenon in Colombia, but they were supposed to have eased after the previous government signed a peace deal with the former guerrilla group Farc in 2016.

The 770km Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline transports medium crude from the Cano Limon complex, located in the Llanos Orientales basin in Arauca department, along the eastern border with Venezuela to the Caribbean port of Covenas.

The operational impact of the pipeline attacks has been mitigated since last year when the interconnecting 120,000 b/d Bicentenario pipeline was retrofitted to enable bidirectional flow, sending the crude to the same Caribbean port through the 790km Ocensa pipeline. But the cost of using the bypass is higher than using the Cano Limon-Covenas line, Ecopetrol officials say.

The perpetrators of the latest attacks were not immediately identified, but volatile eastern Colombia is often the site of attacks by the National Liberation Army (ELN), dissidents of the former guerrilla group Farc, and assorted criminal groups tied to the illegal drugs trade. The ELN and other groups have a growing presence in neighboring Venezuela.

The government of center-right president Ivan Duque says it will not renew a ceasefire and restart talks with the ELN until the group stops criminal activity and releases all hostages. The last bilateral ceasefire, forged under the previous government of center-left president Juan Manuel Santos, expired in January 2018.

"We will not let ourselves be duped by the ELN," Duque told reporters after arriving in Paris this weekend for a peace forum and meetings with the OECD and Unesco. "If they want to continue this wave of attacks on infrastructure, of intimidation, of kidnappings, the only thing they will get from the state is all of its offensive and dissuasive capacity and the facing of justice to respond for their crimes."

The ELN generally does not claim attribution for attacks and has repeatedly called on the government to renew peace talks, a message that Caracas has begun to echo more forcefully in recent weeks amid frequent border incursions by the Venezuelan military into Colombian territory. The guerrilla group recently clashed with the Venezuelan military in remote areas of Venezuela known for illegal mining of gold and coltan.