Oil In Colombia Research Articles

Temporal Dynamics of Airborne Concentrations of Ganoderma Basidiospores and Their Relationship with Environmental Conditions in Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis).

Basal Stem Rot (BSR), caused by Ganoderma spp., is one of the most important emerging diseases of oil palm in Colombia and is so far restricted to only two producing areas in the country. However, despite the controls established to prevent its spread to new areas, containment has not been possible. This study aimed to understand BSR's propagation mechanisms and related environmental conditions by measuring Ganoderma basidiospores' concentrations at various heights using four 7-day Burkard volumetric samplers in a heavily affected plantation. Meteorological data, including solar radiation, temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind speed, were also recorded. Analysis revealed higher basidiospore concentrations below 4 m, peaking at 02:00 h, with increased levels towards the study's end. Spore concentrations were not directly influenced by temperature, humidity, or precipitation, but showed higher releases during drier periods. A significant correlation was found between wind speed and spore concentration, particularly below 1.5 m/s, though higher speeds might aid long-distance pathogen spread. This study highlights the complexity of BSR propagation and the need for continued monitoring and research to manage its impact on Colombia's oil palm industry.

Oiling up the field. Forced internal displacement and the expansion of palm oil in Colombia

Widespread analysis of the link between natural resources and conflicts has shown how positive income shocks in agriculture usually reduce violence (opportunity cost effect), while positive shocks in extractive commodities intensify it (rapacity/lootability effect). However, recent works have found cases where positive income shocks in agriculture lead to more violence. We examine the expansion of palm oil in Colombia to document another case where higher expected profits in agriculture led to more violence. Furthermore, we explore the institutional framework that explains the direction of this effect. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, we find that a 1 log point increase in palm oil prices raises the forced internal displacement rate in palm municipalities by 0.42 standard deviations. We show evidence supporting the hypothesis that the need for new lands explained the violence linked to the palm expansion within a framework in which weak property rights and illegal institutions were predominant. Likewise, we shed light on how the institutional framework shapes the relationship between income shocks and conflict.

Producción de aceite de palma en Colombia: ¿trabajo decente y saludable?

Introducción: este artículo analiza la relación entre el proceso productivo del aceite de palma en Colombia y sus efectos en la salud de los trabajadores del sector. Método: entre marzo y septiembre de 2017, se llevaron a cabo un taller piloto con directivos sindicales y ocho grupos focales en los que participaron 165 trabajadores de diversas áreas y empresas del sector y un taller de revisión y retroalimentación con la participación de diez dirigentes sindicales. Igualmente, se efectuaron visitas a algunas empresas para observar los procesos productivos, tanto en las plantaciones como en las plantas extractoras. La Encuesta de Morbilidad Sentida, sobre la información suministrada por los trabajadores (percepciones e interpretaciones acerca de su estado de salud en vínculo con su trabajo), fue la base para identificar los factores de riesgo del sector, el desgaste, la fatiga y las condiciones de salud-enfermedad asociadas a los oficios del cultivo de la palma en campo y al proceso industrial en la planta de extracción del aceite. Conclusión: la morbilidad sentida sugiere que las cargas laborales, los patrones de desgaste asociados a la producción, la exposición a altas temperaturas y agrotóxicos, además de la intensificación productiva derivada de la forma de organización del trabajo afectan significativamente la salud de los trabajadores de la agroindustria de palma. Basados en estos resultados, sugerimos que los trabajadores del sector deberían ser cobijados por un régimen especial de pensión conjugado con políticas de prevención en salud y seguridad en el trabajo y cobertura de protección social.

Efectos de los auges y la crisis del petróleo en la economía colombiana: un enfoque autorregresivo vectorial variable en el tiempo

El propósito de este documento es estimar el impacto de los choques de precios y producción de petróleo en variables macroeconómicas como la deuda pública, el tipo de cambio real y la actividad económica colombiana. Este país depende en gran medida de las exportaciones de petróleo, lo que podría conducir a diferentes obstáculos en el manejo macroeconómico cuando los precios y la producción de petróleo registran fluctuaciones. El documento describe la importancia del petróleo en Colombia, que pasó de ser un país completamente importador en 1976 a una economía exportadora de petróleo en 1986. El análisis empírico utiliza una metodología de vectores autorregresivos con parámetros cambiantes en el tiempo, que supone que la relación entre los precios y la producción de petróleo con las variables macroeconómicas cambia dinámicamente. Los resultados confirman que existen diferentes patrones de volatilidad estocástica de las variables incluidas en el modelo. De acuerdo con las funciones impulso-respuesta, los choques positivos del precio del petróleo no causaron efectos significativos en el tipo de cambio real ni en la deuda pública. Sin embargo, el choque negativo de los precios en 2015 condujo a una depreciación real y a un aumento de la deuda pública.

Colombia’s oil palm development in times of war and ‘peace’: Myths, enablers and the disparate realities of land control

Between 1993 and 2015 the land planted to oil palm in Colombia increased fourfold, from 119,000ha to 484,000ha. This rapid growth coincided with a period of extreme armed conflict and displacement, with inequality in land distribution reaching the highest levels in Latin America (Oxfam, 2017). These occurrences spurred this inquiry into conditions on the ground in the palm growing zones and the political and economic forces promoting the crop. The theoretical underpinnings are derived from the literature on land grabbing, land control, land concentration and exclusion. Oil palm has been favoured by rural elites, conservative governments and right-wing paramilitaries in an attempted ‘modernising’ of the countryside through agro-industry. Neo-liberal ideas emphasising capital accumulation through the ‘market’ have minimised land reform efforts and impeded post-conflict land restitution. The paper is organised in three main parts. Part 1 introduces the crop and its importance, linked to oil palm's culture of continuous expansion. Relevant theoretical concepts are discussed, together with the background to land and violence in Colombia. Part 2 begins the more detailed analysis of the palm oil industry. A descriptive survey of historical beginnings, modern data availability and distribution of holdings is followed by a more nuanced analysis of industry-induced ‘myths’ and political ‘enablers’ through the Uribe years (2002–10) and the Santos era (2010–2018). In Part 3 the evidence for ‘stolen land’ is examined in representative oil palm locations. The findings are summarised in the conclusion. • Colombia's oil palm area quadrupled in a period of armed conflict and displacement. • The increase was officially attributed to state assistance and new lands from ‘alliances’. • Peasant displacement and ‘cleaning’ of titles consolidated land control. • Despite patchy evidence, case studies have supported findings of ‘stolen land’. • The rural lowlands are modernising but land access remains highly inequitable.

Access to land and the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil in Colombia

ABSTRACT In the wake of the 2008 triple crisis (finance, food, environment), large-scale land investments raised concerns about their negative impacts on local populations. To counter risks to agribusiness’ reputation, sustainability certifications legitimize investments fulfilling certain production criteria. But do such certifications ensure local populations’ land access? This paper investigates the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and argues that its definition of sustainability fails to ensure such land access for two reasons: (1) It refers to land rights instead of recognizing the human right to land (2) It promotes contract farming as win-win. By focusing on local contexts and practices in Colombia, field research provides evidence that to ensure local populations’ land access, the RSPO should opt for a human rights approach. For the Colombian peace process, this result means that the RSPO’s current definition of sustainability is not in line with the integral rural reform planned in the peace agreement.

The Social Origins of Human Rights: Protesting Political Violence in Colombia's Oil Capital, 1919–2010

The Social Origins of Human Rights: Protesting Political Violence in Colombia's Oil Capital, 1919–2010

Relación entre el precio del petróleo y la gasolina para Colombia

This article analyzes the relationship between the price of petroleum (measured in dollars per barrel) and the price of motor gasoline (measured in Colombian pesos per gallon) in Colombia from 2012 to 2016, based on a VAR estimation and the impulse-response function that characterizes each of the variables. It is found that gasoline and crude oil in Colombia do not have a direct relationship (causality test) due to external variables.

Estado, poder y dominio. Una lectura a propósito de sus mecanismos

Este artículo ofrece un análisis de las interacciones entre Estado y actores sociales con base en el estudio de tres casos que asocian actores violentos u oportunistas con la promoción del cultivo de palma de aceite en Colombia. Alejándose de las lecturas que describen tales interacciones como de cooptación aquí se propone que su comprensión es mejor si se las visualiza como procesos asociados al ejercicio del dominio indirecto del Estado. Con este fin, además del marco concep­tual inherente, se revisan las políticas en cuestión, se acomete una descripción de los casos y se proponen tres mecanismos de dominación indirecta: corsarios, amigos y Gulliveres.

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The annual production of crude oil in Colombia has increased, from year to year, to 367 million barrels per year and a proven reserve of 2002 million barrels in 2016. This is due to the intensified production of mature, and heavy crude, oil fields and the use of Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques (EOR). These seek to reduce the saturation of crude oil in a reservoir by injecting fluids such as solvents, polymers, steam and air, mainly. The percentage of recovery in Colombia achieved with EOR techniques is close to 21%. However, its effectiveness depends on: the characteristics of the oil present in the reservoir, the thrust mechanism prevailing in this, pressure, and temperature, in addition to the petrophysical properties of the rock that forms the reservoir. This work deals with the estimation of the dynamic petrophysical properties of rock samples from the producer horizon using Computed Tomography (CT). For this, a set of five numerical algorithms is proposed for the estimation of the effective porosity, saturation, forward front, trapped volume, and recovery factor during the displacement of two liquids, crude and water, inside the porous medium. The purpose of the dynamic characterization using CT is to understand and analyze the parameters that influence the success of crude oil displacement in a porous medium as part of an improved production scheme in mature, and heavy crude, oil fields.

Holding Up the Empire: Colombia, American Oil Interests, and the 1921 Urrutia-Thomson Treaty

Why did the United States subsidize American multinationals' entry into countries treated as informal colonies? We study a classic case of American imperialism, the 1903 U.S. support of Panama's secession from Colombia and subsequent U.S. payment of the 1921 reparations that opened Colombia's oil fields to Standard Oil. We test Noel Maurer's (2013) empire trap hypothesis quantitatively. Archival and econometric evidence documents Colombia's threat to Standard Oil's sunk investment, which induced the multinational to build a supermajority coalition in the U.S. Senate to back a reparations treaty. Results support the empire trap hypothesis but point out important qualifications.

Measurement of fruit color-heterogeneity index and their relation to Jatropha curcas L., oil in Colombia

Jatropha curcas L. is a wild species in the domestication process with an oil and biofuel potential use. The evolutionary-adaptive processes have conferred a reproductive mechanism based on protogyny-geitonogamy, achieving a floral asynchrony addressed to ensure the outcrossing and survival in extreme climate and soil conditions. In the wild, this plant performs a fruit heterogeneity, an unattractive attribute for harvest timing. Therefore, this research aimed to determine the number of harvest, yield and proportion, and physiological states of fruit maturity with the maximum oil quantity and quality. A randomized complete block factorial arrangement of treatments design was performed. The varieties and stages of fruit ripeness, were the factors. A relation of 19: 31: 36: 14 with fruits pericarp colors: green: yellow: yellow-brown: brown, was obtained. The best harvest timing was during the yellow-brown state, which represented the highest oil content associated with high oleic acid and linoleic contents. Nevertheless, for a fruit harvest timing, the use of the epicarp color index is recommended. These results suggest the floral asynchrony breeding traits, requires the ensuring of the fruit homogeneity for mechanical or manual harvesting.

The social origins of human rights: protesting political violence in Colombia's oil capital, 1919-2010

The social origins of human rights: protesting political violence in Colombia's oil capital, 1919-2010

Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia by Winifred Tate

Winifred Tate, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 304 pp.Working on human rights in Colombia in the 1990s was an exercise in dread and frustration. The dread anticipated each morning's headlines. There seemed to be no floor to the violence, as fighters on all sides seemed committed to finding ever more clever ways to mutilate the human body and devastate the human spirit. The main paramilitary leader, Carlos Castano, led a private army known as the Moche Cabezas, or Head Splitters. Often, they'd dismember bodies or leave them posed in macabre dioramas on the side of the road.The guerrillas weren't any better. As a Human Rights Watch researcher, I remember quite clearly the day the news arrived about a tiny village called Machuca, in the same department (state) as Colombia's second largest city, Medellin. At 2 a.m. on October 18, 1998, members of the National Liberation Army ([Ejercito Nacional de Liberacion] ELN) dynamited one of Colombia's oil pipelines. An enormous, viscous glob of aerosolized oil spilled out, slid down a hill, jumped the narrow Pocune River, and landed on the town, bursting into flame with the spark of the lanterns poor people use throughout this rural region. In an instant, 84 people burned to death.Meanwhile, Colombia's military routinely helped the paramilitaries conduct a cleansing campaign that cost thousands their lives and tens of thousands their homes and livelihoods, forcing them to flee to the country's major cities. A common military tactic was to kill civilians, then dress them in old guerrilla uniforms already marked with bullet holes, assuming that investigators would fail to match the wound to the tear. High body counts meant faster promotions and more praise.For their part, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ([Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] FARC) launched their own massacre campaign against banana workers who refused to support them and coca farmers who resisted their takeover of the cocaine business in the country's vast, southern lowlands. As Winifred Tate, a fellow human rights researcher and now anthropologist, describes in her fascinating new book, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia, this was afrantic world of daily emergencies. Paramilitary gunmen occupied villages for days, killing and dismembering their victims. Activists were pulled off buses and shot by the side of the road. Families fled their homes in the cover of darkness with only what they could carry. (1)Next comes the frustration element, largely supplied by Washington, where in the 1980s, Congress and the White House took a new interest in Colombia due to the country's role in supplying US consumers with cocaine (and, while the opium-hating Taliban briefly ruled, heroin). Tate's introductory summary of the shift in US thinking is crisp and detailed, showing how a focus on drugs as a national health issue during the Nixon administration morphed under President George H. W. Bush and then President William Clinton into a high-tech military campaign meant to eradicate coca plants and send soldiers after traffickers and so-called narco-guerrillas - in other words, directly into the heart of Colombia's decades-long internal conflict. The fact that traffickers were often also the paramilitaries who were massacring and disappearing innocents was the kind of pesky fact I was paid to shout into what was usually a void.As Tate notes, Military aid became a solution to the Clinton Administration's political vulnerability generated by Republican concern about domestic drug consumption and the ongoing culture wars (31). In this calculus, Colombia's military was championed by hawkish Democrats while the Colombian police, newly fitted with body armor, helicopters, and US dollars, were Republican darlings, their long-time chief lauded by Republican Dan Burton (R-IN) as the world's best cop. …

Colombia and World War I: The Experience of a Neutral Latin American Nation during the Great War and Its Aftermath, 1914–1921

The cataclysm of World War I reverberated outward from the struggle among Europe's empires into many other regions of the world. Countries far from the military fronts experienced political, economic, social, and environmental entanglements and consequences. The centennial years of the conflagration are an appropriate time for studying the ways in which events in Europe and North America penetrated the ongoing flow of Latin American history. Jane Rausch's study of Colombia, a somewhat precariously neutral Latin American country, is an important contribution to that subject.Rausch is an acknowledged authority on Colombia and the frontier regions of the capitalist era around Latin America. In this book she describes the political, economic, and social life of Colombia on three concentric scales: the transatlantic turmoil, Colombia's decisive turn toward the United States, and the domestic imperatives of the war and immediate postwar years through 1921. The timing of events depended on both military operations in Europe and diplomatic trends in the Americas. Great Britain's naval blockade of Germany in 1915 and German submarine warfare in response in 1916 effectively cut off Latin America's export markets to Europe. The United States stepped opportunistically into the economic and political breach, diverting a large portion of those exports to American markets.This brought Latin America into the orbit of the military powers' strategic plans for long-term control of natural resources critical for military security. Around Latin America and the Caribbean, the war years intensified the export economies' dependence on industrialized countries' capital and markets. Brazilian and Argentine beef exports to Britain rose, Mexican oil flowed northward, Chilean nitrates and copper went to meet the war's needs, and even Cuban grain and sugar exports spiked upward. Compounding this development, beginning in 1914 the war shook the global financial system to its foundations. In Colombia the conflict brought intense economic distress and persistent budget crises. This set the stage for President Marco Fidel Suárez's controversial welcoming of foreign capital and northern markets in the immediate aftermath of the armistice, dubbed the Dance of the Millions.This study shows in new detail the Colombian elite's perspective on the process by which the United States took the opportunity of wartime conditions across the Atlantic and on its waters to consolidate its hegemony around the hemisphere, and Colombia's initiative in this opportunity to expand its exports to the United States. Immediately before the war, 40 percent of the country's exports went to Europe and 50 percent to the United States; afterward, only 15 percent went to Europe and almost three-quarters went to the United States. The extraction of platinum expanded suddenly; by the end of the war Colombia became the world's largest producer of this critical metal. Rising banana exports gave the United Fruit Company increased power to coerce events in the banana belt. North America's craving for caffeine guaranteed Colombia second place in the world's coffee production. And major petroleum companies accelerated their pursuit of Colombia's oil reserves. (Rausch's other studies show the huge impact of large oil discoveries in the Llanos—but only beginning in the 1980s.)Rausch's conclusions about the postwar legacies of those years begin with a reminder that though there was no military conflict in Colombia, the global situation did reach across its borders in the form of 30,000 deaths from influenza. More broadly, the diplomatic front brought Colombia an increase of hemispheric solidarity, including the potential of the Pan-American Union as an arena for pursuing national interests. This was a complementary route to dealing with the politically controversial American hegemony. American interest in Colombia's natural resources, especially its petroleum potential, brought a belated congressional ratification of the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty in 1921, which finally resolved Colombia's loss of Panama and stabilized its relations with the northern colossus.Domestically, the national elite's collaboration with North American corporate interests brought sudden riches for the few, but rising consumer prices in wartime intensified the polarization between rich and poor in years of untrammeled capitalist development. This led to a new surge of social, ethnic, and regional violence, culminating in the bloody United Fruit Company strike in 1928. Social tensions thus remained unresolved throughout the country's later years.Rausch's account is fluently written, and it includes several apt cartoons from the war years. It adds an important national dimension to the growing literature on Latin America in those years in the setting of global events.

The Fatal Attraction of Civil War Economies: Foreign Direct Investment and Political Violence, A Case Study of Colombia

Civil war acutely inhibits economic growth, according to a prominent set of civil war literature. However, recent scholarship observes that foreign direct investment (FDI), considered a central vehicle of growth, is entering countries with internal armed conflicts unabated. Furthermore, some civil war economies exhibit substantial increases in FDI during conflict. According to this scholarship, FDI enters conflict zones in spite of violence. This article contrastingly adopts a critical framework acknowledging the often violent characteristics of globalized capitalism. By analyzing Colombia's oil industry (the country's largest sector of FDI), this article suggests that civil war violence can create conditions that facilitate FDI inflows. More specifically, this article posits that violence perpetrated by armed groups sympathetic to the interests of the oil industry—namely the public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries—has facilitated FDI in Colombia's oil sector. In particular, processes of forced displacement and violence against civilian groups have served to protect economically important infrastructure and have acquired land for oil exploration. Moreover, civilian groups deemed inimical to oil interests have been violently targeted. By using disaggregate-level data on the conflict in Arauca, an important oil-producing region of Colombia, this case study indicates that intensifying levels of civil war violence in areas of economic interest are followed by increases in oil production, exploration, and investment.

Rooted in Violence: Civil War, International Trade and the Expansion of Palm Oil in Colombia

Internal armed conflict severely inhibits economic growth according to a prominent set of civil war literature. Similarly, emerging scholarship finds that civil war inhibits processes of economic globalisation which are argued to produce economic growth. A case in point is international trade, which is reportedly stymied by intra-state war. In contrast, this article employs a critical theoretical framework which acknowledges the often violent tendencies of globalised capitalism. By analysing Colombia's palm oil industry, this article argues that civil war violence can facilitate international trade. In the case study which is presented, violence perpetrated by Colombia's public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries has enabled the palm oil sector to enter and compete in the globalised economy. This includes processes of forced displacement, which have acquired land for palm oil cultivation, and violence directed at civil groups deemed inimical to the interests of the palm oil sector. By employing a micro-level approach, this article attempts to isolate violent trends related to palm oil cultivation in Meta, the largest African palm-growing region in Colombia. An attempt is therefore made to give an empirically informed account of how violence in Colombia's civil war is facilitating palm oil exports.

Contesting legitimacy of voluntary sustainability certification schemes: Valuation languages and power asymmetries in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in Colombia

Voluntary certification schemes aimed at assuring producer compliance with a set of sustainability criteria have emerged as market-based instruments (MBIs) of sustainability governance. However, the impacts they tackle can be part of a complex arena of socio-environmental conflict, where values and powers of business and local actors compete. Legitimacy of these schemes not only results from compliance by business actors; but also depends on acceptance by local actors affected by, or resisting the industries that these mechanisms aim to govern. This paper explores the influence of different local actors' values and powers on legitimacy granting or contestation by local actors during national processes of sustainability criteria development. We analyse the case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Colombia using an approach that combines concepts of ecological economics and political ecology with the legitimacy literature based on critical sociology. In Colombia, the palm oil industry led the initiative to implement certification under national interpretation of RSPO principles and criteria. However, the national interpretation process revealed power asymmetries among stakeholders and clashes between their different values. This resulted in strong contestation of RSPO legitimacy by local actors who resist expansion of oil palm cultivation.

Modelos logísticos para la optimización del transporte de racimos de fruto fresco de palma de aceite en Colombia

<span>Los modelos de optimización del transporte en el sector palmicultor, buscan disminuir el costo de operación logística asociado con la asignación de vehículos en las etapas de recolección y transporte de los Racimos de Fruto Fresco (RFF) aquí, se proponen dos modelos logísticos aplicables en la gestión del transporte en la agroindustria de la palma de aceite en Colombia. El primer modelo describe la operación general y garantiza el envío de la recolección desde los puntos de acopio interno hasta los puntos de acopio externo, y de estos últimos a la planta productora. Y el segundo propone la condición single sourcing (Única fuente), para asegurar que el fruto proveniente de un lote, se asigne a sólo un acopio externo y se faciliten acciones como la inspección de la producción y el control de calidad de los lotes. La importancia de plantear un modelo single sourcing genera distintas posibilidades para evaluar escenarios en donde se ven enfrentados a diario los agentes que intervienes en este sector, buscando mecanismos de coordinación e integración. El modelo single sourcing modifica las condiciones de operación y de esta manera, se constituye en una herramienta básica que permite medir incidencias técnicas y económicas de cambios en la forma como opera el sistema de transporte. Al final se presentan los resultados, conclusiones y recomendaciones de este trabajo.</span>

Oil, Coffee and the Dynamic Commons Problems in Colombia

The dynamic commons problem arises when different groups in society engage in intense redistributive activity as a result of an export boom. This paper analyzes the role that institutions play in ameliorating that problem in the case of coffee and oil in Colombia. The paper presents a model that rationalizes the existence of a federation of coffee producers that effectively reduces inefficient redistribution to other sectors of society. According to the empirical evidence we find that domestic coffee prices have been unaffected by political factors, so that in practice appropriation of coffee rents does not depend on electoral and partisan cycles. The case of oil is substantially different. Here, rents are claimed by a large number of divided agents. According to the model, one feasible solution to the dynamic commons problem when the fiscal structure is not unitary is to impose a set of rules that restrict appropriations by different groups during windfalls. The major cost of this solution, embodied in the Oil Stabilization Fund, is the total loss of flexibility.