On March 25th, 2021, the National Hydrocarbons Agency (“ANH” as per its acronym in Spanish) did the pre-launch of the Colombia 2021 Round (Ronda Colombia 2021 hereinafter, the “Ronda”) through which the ANH aims to continue with the reactivation process of the Colombian oil & gas industry through the allocation of new areas for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons, as it priorly did with the Permanent Process of Allocation of Areas (Proceso Permanente de Asignación de Áreas) of 2019.
Some of the main characteristics of the Ronda are the following:
- Initially, a total of 32 areas will be offered, of which 20 will correspond to areas for E&P contracts and the remaining 12 will be assigned to TEAs contracts.
- Unlike previous processes, access to the information and technical data of the process will be free.
- The free areas of the land map that are not offered by the ANH may be proposed by the interested parties.
- The terms of reference for the process are being reviewed, in order to improve the conditions included in previous processes.
- The proposed schedule establishes that the first deadline to file the habilitation documents will be on August 31, 2021 and the first contracts shall be allocated on the first days of December 2021.
- From April 9, the ANH will perform technical zoom conferences, publishing the relevant information for each of the basins in which the 32 areas offered by the ANH are located.