By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) -Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called for the sale of state oil firm Ecopetrol’s fracking operations in the United States to invest in clean energy.
The leftist leader’s request was made to his minister of mines and energy, Andres Camacho, in an unusual live broadcast of a cabinet meeting.
“I want this operation to be sold in order to invest in clean energy in Colombia, to be discussed technically, and economically,” he said. “It cannot be that we are for death and not for life.”
A spokesperson for Ecopetrol said the company would not immediately provide a comment.
The meeting came a day after Ecopetrol announced an agreement to renew its oil joint venture with Occidental Petroleum in the U.S. Permian Basin in Texas, first signed in 2019.
The contract extension is set to run until 2027 with the possibility of a further extension.
The firm’s Chief Executive Ricardo Roa said on Monday Ecopetrol could drill around 91 development wells with an investment of over $880 million this year.
Ecopetrol’s Permian Basin oil and gas production rose nearly 62% in the first nine months of last year to 95,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day, according to the firm, while output declined elsewhere.
Last year, Ecopetrol backed out of a $3.6 billion deal to buy a 30% stake in shale producer CrownRock from Occidental at the eleventh hour after orders from Petro, prompting the ire of Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub.
“We worked on that deal from March to just last week, and we thought we were done, but President Petro of Colombia didn’t approve of it,” she said in an earnings call last August.
“Unfortunately, there are others in the world like Petro and there are some actually in the United States who believe oil and gas should go away and believe that we shouldn’t be an industry anymore.”
Petro has made weaning Colombia away from fossil fuels a key goal of his government.
“There is no other way for humanity but to stop the path of fossil fuels,” Petro said at the meeting on Monday. “This is not happening because the oil companies are beating us, because we are afraid of them. I am not afraid of them.”
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta, Carlos Vargas and Oliver Griffin; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Kylie Madry and Sonali Paul)
