Colombia oil pipeline attacks jump to 84

Colombia´s state-controlled Ecopetrol is cleaning up a small oil spill following another attack on the Caño Limón-Coveñas crude pipeline, which has been attacked on average every four days in 2018.

The 220,000 b/d pipeline, which runs along the eastern border with Venezuela, has been bombed 84 times in the year to date, compared with 62 strikes in all of 2017, 42 in 2016 and 22 in 2015.

This year's tally is the highest since 2001, when the line was hit 166 times.

The 770km pipeline has only operated for 49 days this year, according to Ecopetrol. The line was not in service at the moment of the latest attack.

The pipeline transports medium crude from the Caño Limón complex, located in the Llanos Orientales basin in Arauca department, along the eastern border to the Caribbean port of Coveñas.

Of this year's attacks, 66 have taken place in Norte de Santander department, 12 in Arauca and 6 in Boyacá, according to Ecopetrol.

The latest strike took place in La Cañaguata, in the Boyacá municipality of Cubará.

The operational impact of the 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 Caño Limón-Coveñas line, Ecopetrol officials say.

The perpetrators of the latest attack was 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, all tied to the illegal drugs trade. The ELN and other groups have a growing presence in neighboring Venezuela.

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 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.