Colombia's Oil and Gas Reserves Keep Shrinking

For a decade, Colombia's economically vital oil industry has been caught in a death spiral. A combination of sharply weaker oil prices, rising geopolitical risk and anti-petroleum industry reforms implemented by Colombia's first leftist president Gustavo Petro deterred investment, causing the operational tempo to decline. The main issue weighing heavily on the oil patch's outlook is a dire lack of proven petroleum reserves. These are the result of a lack of spending on wildcat drilling and a poor exploration success rate.

After a lengthy delay, Colombia's regulatory authority, the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH), released the 2025 report on the Andean country's oil reserves. Since the end of the 2020 COVID pandemic, Colombia's proven oil and natural gas reserves have remained flat. This trend is evident from the 2025 reserve report, where proven or 1P oil reserves totaled just over 2 billion barrels, a nearly 1% decrease compared to a year earlier. Despite that drop, the productive life of Colombia's 1P reserves grew from 7.2 years for 2024 to 7.6 years.

Both proven and probable (2P) as well as proved, possible and probable (3P) reserves also declined, falling 2% and 3% year over year to 2.56 billion barrels and 2.99 billion barrels, respectively. The moderate increase in the productive life of 1P reserves occurred for one simple reason: Colombia's oil production is in decline, falling to a multiyear low of 724,910 barrels per day for April 2026. Indeed, that number was the lowest output since June 2021, when the Andean country lifted 694,151 barrels daily.

The vast majority of Colombia's 1P reserves, 74%, are located in the Llanos Basin with 15.3% in the Middle Magdalena Valley and 3.8% situated in the Upper Magdalena Valley. The aging Rubiales field in the Llanos Basin is the largest oilfield on the basis of proven reserves and remains Colombia's most productive petroleum acreage. For the year-to-date, ANH data shows 11.3 million barrels of oil have been lifted from the Rubiales field, which is nearly double that of the Castilla field, also situated in the Llanos Basin.

Colombia's natural gas reserves also fell sharply during 2025. The ANH report shows 1P natural gas reserves plummeted by a whopping 17% year over year to 1.7 trillion cubic feet. Meanwhile, 2P reserves plunged 11% to 2.38 trillion cubic feet and 3P fell 8% to 3 trillion cubic feet.

Like petroleum production, Colombia's natural gas output continues to spiral lower. April 2026 output plunged 14% year over year to 694 million cubic feet daily, the lowest production volume since January 2026. It is also a worrying 36% less than the same period a decade earlier, when Colombia pumped 1.08 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily.