Colombia: Oil and Civil Society

Abstract

The oil industry in Colombia and its major reforms have been marked by the strong economic technocracy within the Treasury and the National Planning Department, which are closely connected with Colombia’s most prestigious faculty of economics and its most influential public policy think-tank. This chapter observes that political parties, segments of academia, some NGOs, trade unions and the media have played varying roles in debates about the management of the oil sector. For example, they have been quite effective at attaching public stigma to fracking, thereby pre-emptively undermining its introduction in Colombia. Emotional public opposition to fracking is not unique to Colombia: this is observed also in the Algeria and UK case studies. In Colombia, however, illegal armed groups have also played a role in the management of oil revenues, particularly in the territories under their influence. The deep polarization of the Colombian public sphere regularly prevents public debate on oil from addressing the specific challenges that the sector faces, leading instead to a war of attrition between supporters of the guerrillas and opponents of capitalism on the one hand and opponents of the guerrillas and supporters of capitalism on the other.