Editorial: The “loco” creeps back into Colombia

The bloom is coming off the Colombia rose, with the frustrating news for Greystar Resources on March 4 that environmental public hearings on its Angostura project there were terminated early owing to “confrontations” at the meeting in Bucaramanga.

Three days later, Colombia’s Mines and Energy Minister Carlos Rodado Noriega appeared at the “Colombia Day” session of the Prospectors and Developers Association convention in Toronto to face questions from hostile Greystar shareholders.

A visibly irritated Rodado repeatedly emphasized that the Colombian government “has not changed the rules of the game” and that the issue was specifically with “the quality of Greystar’s submissions” which he said did not match the quality that would be necessary for a project to proceed in Canada, for example.

Rodado was late for his PDAC speech, as he was dealing by phone with the Colombian troops’ freeing that morning of 22 of 23 Talisman Energy-Ecopetrol contractors kidnapped by FARC guerillas in Vichado state the day before.

The two developments belied the country’s new travel slogan touted during the event, “Colombia: the only risk is wanting to stay.”