Colombia’s national oil company Ecopetrol announced that profits fell by 10% this year due to guerrilla attacks on oil infrastructure, Colombian media reported on Thursday.
Ecopetrol’s net profit for the first half of this year reached $3.6 billion, representing a 10% reduction from the same period last year, according to Colombia’s Caracol Radio.
At the same time, the company has reported $1.5 billion in profits at the start of the second half of 2014; a reduction of 11.7% compared to last year, according to Ecopetrol president Javier Genaro Gutierrez.
The reason behind the fall in profits has been attributed to lower production as a result of attacks and blockades on the infrastructure that have caused environmental problems and impacted the production of about 40,000 barrels of oil per day.
Indigenous protests also accounted for a loss of two million barrels during the month of April.
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During the first half of 2014, Ecopetrol’s production averaged 750,000 barrels per day, which was 4.4% lower than in 2013.
June was the most productive month of this year for the national oil company, with 714,000 barrels produced daily, and it was attributed to the “relative normalcy in operations.”
During April and May of this year, production was heavily impacted by attacks on the Caño Limon-Coveñas pipeline that shut down operations for 40 days between March 25 and June 3.
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There were 64 attacks on oil pipelines during the first six months of this year, forcing evacuations and halting production, according to Caracol.
However, in terms of consolidated sales and not net profit, Ecopetrol saw a 4.9% increase from the first half of 2013.
“The results of the second quarter of 2014 show the positive impact of the behavior of international oil prices, which managed to offset, in part, the strong impacts of the difficult conditions of the environment,” said Gutierrez.