Colombia Mining Sees US$4.7 Billion in New Mines as Oil Firms Line Up for Shale
Colombia’s mining industry says the country can attract close to US$4.7 billion to build new mines over the next four years, the most ambitious investment target the sector has set in more than a decade. And it is no longer a lone bet: oil companies are simultaneously preparing shale projects after President Abelardo de la Espriella authorized fracking, turning Colombia mining and hydrocarbons into the twin growth engines of the new government’s economic program.
Juan Camilo Nariño, president of the Colombian Mining Association (ACM), laid out the figure in an interview with Portafolio ahead of the sector’s Annual Mining Congress. If the right decisions are taken, he said, Colombia can also lift annual exploration spending from an average of about US$100 million to between US$260 million and US$270 million, sustained over the four-year term — money that would move late-stage copper and gold projects into construction and production.
From US$100 Million to US$270 Million in Exploration
The math behind the target starts with how little of the country has been explored. Nariño has repeatedly noted that 97 percent of Colombian territory has no mining exploration at all, while the legal industry operates on barely 1 percent of the land. Yet that footprint already supports more than one million direct and indirect jobs, and mining companies buy COP$14 trillion (about US$4.4 billion) a year from local suppliers and contractors.
“In the next four years Colombia can attract a figure close to US$4.7 billion in investment for the construction of mines and to produce the minerals this energy transition needs,” Nariño said. “That means, above all, jobs and productive linkages — dynamism for the Colombian business fabric in those regions.”
The fiscal upside is equally concrete. The sector currently delivers around COP$5 trillion (about US$1.56 billion) a year in income tax and royalties from coal, nickel, gold, emeralds and construction materials. Adding copper, tungsten and other minerals could lift those annual contributions to between COP$8 trillion and COP$9 trillion (about US$2.5 billion to US$2.8 billion) by the end of the four-year term, Nariño said — a level he argues could be sustained for 20 to 30 years.
The Four Years Nariño Wants Reversed
The optimism is framed by an unusually blunt accounting of the previous administration. More than 150 decrees, resolutions, laws and new taxes hit the sector over the last four years, Nariño said, shrinking mining’s share of GDP by 18 percent and collapsing foreign direct investment in mining by 88 percent. In coal alone, 14,600 Colombians lost their jobs between 2024 and 2025.
His list of demands is specific. First, strike the accumulated rules from the legal order — a process he says the new government has already begun by eliminating the decree that banned coal exports to Israel, with announced rollbacks of the APAS and ZAPAS environmental-designation decrees and restrictions such as Decree 044. Second, restore security in producing regions, where mining investment is highly vulnerable to threats on the ground. Third, speed up mining and environmental permitting — without loosening standards.
On standards, Nariño points to the TSM (Towards Sustainable Mining) protocol, which ACM member companies have followed for five years. The public ratings of all 24 affiliated mines — covering water, biodiversity, climate change, child-labor prevention, community relations, tailings and mine closure — are the same benchmarks applied in Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden. “Mining cannot be done everywhere, and it cannot be done any way,” he said. “It has to be done where it can be done, and to the highest international standards.”
Coal Still Carries the Fiscal Load
Coal, the sector’s most criticized product, remains its fiscal backbone. Between 2022 and 2024 the mining industry handed the state COP$43 trillion (about US$13.4 billion) in income tax and royalty payments, 85 percent of it from coal — Colombia’s third-largest export product. Nariño argues that a strategic approach to coal means cheaper energy in a country whose industry and citizens pay among the highest power prices in Latin America, and that construction-materials mining means cheaper housing and cheaper reconstruction after the August 10 earthquake, whose costs are still being counted.
He is equally direct about the sector’s shadow side. Illegal mineral extraction is “the biggest environmental crime in the country,” he said, visible from any airplane and audible in the mercury-based processing plants that legal mining does not use. Fighting it, he added, requires both the full weight of the state and bringing formal companies into those territories to generate lawful production environments.
Oil Firms Line Up for Shale
The mining pitch lands just as the oil industry mobilizes around the new government’s flagship energy decision. In his August 7 inauguration speech, De la Espriella announced that Colombia will authorize “responsible and sustainable” fracking under strict technical and environmental standards, framing it as essential to energy security. Vice President José Manuel Restrepo had detailed the mechanism during the transition: one decree to authorize new exploration and production contracts, another to expressly permit unconventional development.
The industry is not starting from zero. Nine contracts linked to unconventional reservoirs already exist and would be the first to activate: seven exploration and production contracts plus two pilot-evaluation agreements — Ecopetrol’s Kalé and the Platero project of a US major. Together the blocks cover roughly 849,000 hectares and carry committed investments above US$517 million, according to sector analyses.
Budgets are already pointing the same direction. Ecopetrol plans to invest COP$22 trillion to COP$27 trillion (about US$6.8 billion to US$8.4 billion) in 2026, with roughly 70 percent going to hydrocarbons, and the government has set its sights on doubling national output toward 1.3 million barrels per day. Among private operators, GeoPark raised its Colombia budget to between US$110 million and US$120 million and is buying Frontera Energy’s 17 Colombian blocks in a US$400 million deal, while Parex Resources plans to invest US$300 million this year. The push matters for gas as much as oil: Colombia’s proven reserves cover barely 5.9 years of consumption, with a 2032 deadline to preserve energy autonomy.
Skeptics note that shale projects need eight to fifteen years to break even — far beyond a single presidential term — and that legal stability will ultimately require Congress, not decrees. But for the first time in years, both extractive industries are describing the same trajectory: capital committed, projects queued, and a government asking them to move faster.
Exchange-rate basis for the peso figures in this article: 3,213.97 Colombian pesos per US dollar, the official market rate (TRM) for September 1, 2026.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error
Read More from The Rio Times