Hard at work: a nodding donkey at one of Colombia's onshore fields
Colombia pumps up the volume
Colombia's average oil output in March hit 563,000 barrels per day, up 9% from 519,000 bpd pumped in the same month last year, bolstered by Ecopetrol's output and new discoveries, the country's National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) said today.
Last month, the ANH had said in March it expected Colombia's output to top 570,000 bpd by the end of this year.
Colombia produced 820,000 bpd in the 1990s, but violence from its guerrilla insurgency crimped output and foreign investment.
"This confirms that there has been a reverse in the tendency toward declining production," Reuters quoted ANH director Armando Zamora telling a press conference.
Zamora said foreign direct investment climbed 40% in the first quarter of this year to between $1 billion and $1.2 billion, compared with the same period a year earlier.
As its rebel conflict eases under President Alvaro Uribe, Colombia hopes its oil and gas output will reach 700,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2015 and 1 million boed by 2020.
Colombia is trying to attract more foreign investment in its energy sector to explore new discoveries and keep it from becoming a net oil importer. But Zamora said that prospective had now been pushed back beyond 2015.