An unidentified group attacked the Caño Limon-Coveñas oil pipeline
operated by state-owned oil company Ecopetrol SA on July
17 and the company resumed operations on July 21, an official from the
company said Tuesday.
The Colombian army secured the zone and Ecopetrol’s workers
traveled to the area to fix the pipeline, Alexandra Santamaria, a
company spokeswoman, said. The attack happened close to a school though
no victims were reported.
The 770-kilometer pipeline has a capacity of 240,000 barrels a day
and daily ships about 90,000 barrels of crude produced in the Caño
Limon field located in the Arauca province in Eastern Colombia to the
Caribbean port of Coveña. U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp.
(OXY) operates the Caño Limon field and Ecopetrol operates the
pipeline.
The company stopped pumping oil through the pipeline but oil
production and shipments continued as usual because Ecopetrol had
stored enough oil in the port and has storage capacity in the field.
The pipeline has a system that shuts valves automatically in case of a leak to avoid oil spills.
Rebel groups, mainly from the left-wing guerrilla National
Liberation Army used to attack the pipeline several times a year during
the 1990s and the early years of this decade. The number of attacks has
fallen dramatically in the past few years.
Ecopetrol currently produces an average of 482,000 barrels of oil
equivalent a day and expects to hit 600,000 barrels of oil equivalent a
day in 2010.
Shares of Ecopetrol fell 2% to 2,690 Colombian pesos ($1.34) at
10:56 a.m. EDT, while the benchmark IGBC stock index was down 1.2%.