Colombia’s share of imported natural gas jumped from 3% of total consumption, a figure that held stable between 2015 and 2023, to 23% in the first quarter of 2026, according to a report that ANIF (Asociación Nacional de Instituciones Financieras, the country’s main financial research body) published on May 2, projecting the figure could reach 39% before the year closes and 58% by 2027, a trajectory that signals the country’s decade-long self-sufficiency in gas is over.
The shift carries direct consequences for electricity bills and industrial costs, because gas functions as Colombia’s primary backup fuel whenever hydroelectric reservoirs run low during dry seasons, and higher import prices translate almost automatically into higher generation costs across the grid.
How Colombia lost energy self-sufficiency
Colombia’s domestic gas production fell 17.1% in 2025, closing the year at 794 million cubic feet per day, and in February 2026 output averaged 695 million cubic feet per day, one of the lowest monthly readings since 2009, according to data from the Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos (ANH). The country’s reserves declined steadily through the early 2020s while the Petro administration, which took office in August 2022, restricted new hydrocarbon exploration contracts as part of a broader energy transition policy, removing the investment pipeline that historically replaced aging fields with fresh supply.
Camilo Morales, secretary general of Naturgas, Colombia’s gas industry association, stated in March 2026 that a major offshore discovery offers some hope, but that policy conditions must improve before private operators commit the capital needed to bring new production online at the scale the deficit requires.
A global conflict making a domestic problem more expensive
The US-Israel-Iran conflict introduced a new pressure point on top of Colombia’s domestic production shortfall by disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf through which 20% to 25% of the world’s traded liquefied natural gas (LNG, gas cooled to liquid form for ocean transport) moves, according to ANIF. Colombia does not receive gas through the Strait directly, but the disruption pushed international LNG prices higher, and since Colombia now imports LNG at market rates to cover its gap, every price spike abroad reaches Colombian industry and households within weeks.
What makes that exposure particularly costly is timing: Colombia’s import dependency accelerated precisely as global LNG prices climbed, meaning the country entered the import market at one of its most expensive moments in recent years, with no domestic production growth in sight to cushion the bill.
The electricity risk Colombia cannot afford to ignore
ANIF calculates, using data from grid operator XM, that Colombia could face a 2.3% deficit in electricity supply given delays in new generation projects, a figure that may seem modest but translates into rationing risk during peak demand periods, particularly when El Niño conditions reduce the water levels that drive the hydroelectric plants supplying around 70% of the country’s electricity in normal years.
Without new domestic gas supply or accelerated renewable capacity, Colombia’s generation costs will rise along the full deficit curve that ANIF projects: 39% import dependency this year, 58% in 2027, 41% in 2028, and 57% by 2030, according to figures from the Bolsa Mercantil de Colombia.
No easy exit before 2028
To this day, no new large-scale domestic gas project holds a confirmed production timeline before 2028, and energy attorney Ernesto Guzmán argued in Asuntos Legales in April 2026 that restoring supply requires developing both local and external sources simultaneously, rather than treating new exploration as incompatible with decarbonization targets.
Colombia’s self-sufficiency lost over three years will not recover on its own, and every month that passes without a clear production roadmap means the cost of that gap falls directly on households and industries whose energy bills will reflect an import market that neither the government nor the private sector currently controls.