Parex Becomes Colombia’s Top Private Oil Firm With $750m Frontera Deal

COLOMBIA · BUSINESS

A months-long contest for Frontera’s Colombian oilfields is over — and the winner emerges as the country’s biggest private producer, reshaping the second tier of Colombia’s oil industry.

A $750m deal for Colombian oil assets

Parex Resources has completed its acquisition of Frontera Energy’s exploration-and-production business in Colombia, in a transaction valued at roughly $750m. The total includes about $525m in equity consideration and a $25m contingent payment to be released over the next 12 months if certain contract extensions go ahead. With the deal closed, Parex becomes the largest independent, Colombia-focused oil producer — and the country’s biggest private producer after the state-controlled Ecopetrol.

The acquired portfolio adds around 37,000 barrels of oil per day, supporting Parex’s projected second-half 2026 output of between 82,000 and 91,000 barrels a day. The company said it now holds more than 7.9 million acres of acreage along with sizeable, long-life reserves. Beyond the oilfields, the purchase also included a reverse-osmosis water-treatment plant and a palm-oil plantation that came with Frontera’s Colombian operations.

How Parex won the bidding war

The outcome followed a competitive contest. In late January, GeoPark announced a deal to buy 100% of Frontera’s Colombian oil-and-gas assets for about $375m. Parex then stepped in with an unsolicited counter-offer of around $500m plus assumed debt and a $25m contingent payment — a roughly 31% premium — and Frontera’s board ultimately switched, terminating the GeoPark agreement (paying a $25m break fee) and signing a definitive deal with Parex in March. Shareholders approved the transaction, which was then cleared by the British Columbia Supreme Court in Canada, where Frontera is incorporated.

Frontera’s pivot to infrastructure

For Frontera, the sale marks a strategic turn. The Calgary-based company says it will keep operating in Colombia but now focused on energy infrastructure, with interests including the Llanos Orientales pipeline system and the Puerto Bahía terminal. At Puerto Bahía, Frontera is advancing a regasification project to import gas from abroad alongside Ecopetrol — Frontera owning the infrastructure, Ecopetrol operating the regasification point — and plans facilities to import liquefied petroleum gas. The company said its infrastructure business generated $77m in cash flow in 2025 and projected up to $120m in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from the division by the end of 2026.

Why it matters

The transaction reshapes the upper tier of Colombia’s private oil sector at a sensitive moment for the industry, which faces policy uncertainty under a government that has discouraged new exploration. Consolidation of this size — one foreign operator exiting upstream production while another scales up — signals continued investor appetite for Colombian oil despite that backdrop, and gives Parex the scale and capital efficiency it says will make it a more resilient platform for long-term growth.