Minister Irene Vélez, in accordance with President Petro’s instructions, has once again said that there will be no more oil and gas exploration contracts.
The fact is not minor, because when the motion of censure was made precisely because of the indignation that this announcement caused; both she and Minister Ocampo said that the oil and gas exploration contracts would continue.
Now to the perplexity of everyone, including those attending the Davos forum, the minister once again says that oil and gas exploration is prohibited.
The energy transition that the world has planned does not mean the disappearance of hydrocarbons.
Carbon neutrality is thought even using oil and gas in very high percentages.
The whole theory assumes mechanisms to reduce GHGs, trapping them, or even using aerosols in the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays before they are trapped.
Petro and his minister falsely pose as environmentalists.
It is not true that this measure in any way contributes to combating global warming. Stopping exploring or even exploiting, does not mean that consumption and its emissions decrease.
Let me explain: if we stop producing oil and gas, that does not mean that our demand changes: we will continue using gasoline, steel, urea, concrete…
Nor does it mean that it does not occur; it will be produced elsewhere, we do not know if more or less is emitted in its production; Let’s remember that hydrocarbon production in Venezuela today is much dirtier than national production: more GHGs are emitted there per barrel.
This being the case, the GHG emissions outlook for Colombia or the world does not improve at all due to this decision.
Only domestic income is restricted.
In this sense, it is worth noting that 15% of national income comes from hydrocarbons, like 30% from regional ones.
This is not a minor topic.
In the world when talking about the just energy transition, the biggest debate focuses on which countries can exploit hydrocarbons.
Developing countries say their off-the-shelf farms can meet demand until 2050 and therefore no one else should explore and they will mine everything. Developing countries, for their part, maintain that developed countries have already extracted a large part of their hydrocarbons and have had that wealth and, therefore, the possibility of exploring and exploiting hydrocarbons should correspond only to developing countries. .
It is impressive that President Petro is aligned with the interests of the richest countries.
It hurts that even seeing what Europe has suffered by giving up its energy sovereignty, they want to lead us down that path.
It seems that the interests of Maduro have more weight in the decisions of the president of Colombia than those of his own people.
It is also worthwhile for all of us to know that Colombia only emits 0.56% of all GHGs in the world.
That is, if Colombia did not issue anything, the phenomenon would not change at all. Our emissions come mainly from deforestation.
In addition, Colombia is a country with a great energy transition; planned and well executed.
However, its biggest challenge is not that, but mitigation. We will be one of the countries most affected by climate change and to carry out the works we will need a lot of income. Those that today the Petro government takes away from us.
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