Tally of Colombia oil pipeline strikes rises to 32

Colombia's state-controlled Ecopetrol is warning residents to stay away from an oil spill caused by another attack on its 220,000 b/d Cano Limon-Covenas crude pipeline.

The attack was one of two overnight on the 770km pipeline that runs along Colombia's increasingly tense eastern border with Venezuela.

The volatile spill into the Cubugon river was caused by an attack in the town of Cedeno in Toledo municipality in the department of Norte de Santander, Ecopetrol reported this morning.

A second attack took place overnight in La Pesquera in Arauquita municipality in Arauca, another border department.

The company reported that the pipeline has been targeted 32 times in the year to date, with 18 attacks in Arauca and 14 in Norte de Santander.

The attacks took place amid a flare-up in tensions between Colombia and Venezuela, after dissidents of Colombia's former Farc guerrilla group declared a resumption of hostilities against the Colombia state. The dissidents led by alias Ivan Marquez have shifted their base of operations into Venezuela, where the disputed government of President Nicolas Maduro is providing them with support, according to the Colombian government.

Maduro said publicly in July that the Farc dissident leaders are welcome in Venezuela.

The splinter group is tied to drug trafficking and sustains its operations through extortion, kidnapping and illegal mining. Other Colombian rebel groups such as the ELN and assorted criminal organizations are also active along the border.

The Venezuelan armed forces are currently holding military exercises on the border, prompting Colombia and regional allies to invoke a 1947 reciprocal defense treaty, known as the Rio Pact or TIAR in Spanish, at a meeting of the Organization of American States in Washington yesterday. The group is expected to meet for consultations in the context of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York later this month.