Colombia Cano Limon – Covenas pipeline oil flow halted since Monday

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Pipeline Cano Limon-Covenas

Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta / Reuters

BOGOTA
Petroleumworld 11 18 2021

The flow of crude oil through Colombia’s Cano Limon – Covenas pipeline has been halted since Monday, a spokeswoman for oil transportation company Cenit said on Wednesday, following an incident in the country’s Norte de Santander province.

The pipeline, which runs from the Cano Limon oil field to Covenas in the Caribbean, is frequently the target of bombings by leftist guerrillas the National Liberation Army (ELN), while criminal groups steal oil for processing in clandestine refineries via illicit valves.

The unspecified incident in Tibu municipality was discovered during a flyover of the area, Cenit said in a statement on Monday. The company is a subsidiary of Colombia’s majority state-owned oil company Ecopetrol.

The army has been deployed to secure the area and to allow technical teams to evaluate the damage

Norte de Santander is the latest epicenter of violence in Colombia’s long internal armed conflict, and a new 14,000-strong military was created last month to stem bloodshed, which is fueled by rising cocaine production.

An average of 3,299 barrels of crude oil were being stolen each day in Colombia through June 30 according to Cenit, the majority of which came from the Cano Limon – Covenas pipeline.

Dwindling supplies of cheap gasoline being smuggled from Venezuela have coincided with a surge in theft of crude oil in Colombia since 2016, as criminal gangs look to replace the fuel which is a key component in the production of cocaine.

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Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Cynthia Osterman from Reuters.

reuters.com 11 18 2021

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