What role does Export Development Canada play in promoting extractivism in Colombia?
How much financing does Export Development Canada (EDC) provide to Canadian oil and gas corporations operating in Colombia? What does that money specifically support? How does it impact on human rights and the safety of environmental defenders?
How compliant is EDC with its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies? Do these policies need to be strengthened?
These are important questions to answer.
Peace Brigades International has expressed the concern that: “The activities of [public development banks] have repeatedly exacerbated poverty, widened inequalities and fuelled human rights violations (such as reprisals, land grabbing and forced evictions) without access to any useful remedies for affected communities.”
Export Development Canada (EDC) is Canada’s public development bank.
In October 2021, The Toronto Star reported: “EDC, the government’s export credit agency, says it provided financing and insurance that helped facilitate $62 billion in business for Canadian oil and gas companies from 2015 to 2020.”
Earlier that year, Oil Change International had also noted: “EDC currently provides oil and gas companies with an average of over CAD 13 billion in support each year.”
What do we know about the relationship between EDC and Canadian oil and gas companies operating in Colombia?
In June 2019, Gustavo Galvis, EDC’s Chief representative for the Andean, Central American, Caribbean region in Bogotá, uncritically highlighted: “At one point, Canada was one of the largest investors in [the oil and gas] sector in Colombia. One of the reasons is because there’s a lot of similarities between the Alberta foothills and the Colombian geography. Canadian operators feel comfortable with the industry and today, some of the most important companies in exploration and production in Colombia are Canadian.”
Natural Resources Canada has reported that at $8 billion in 2018, Colombia was second largest location for Canadian Energy Assets Abroad (CEAA).
In a May 2022 PBI-Canada webinar, Bronwen Tucker of Oil Change International highlighted: “Since 2012, Export Development Canada has given CAD $1.4 billion in government backed loans to oil and gas in Colombia. This is 44 per cent of all G20 international public finance for energy in Colombia in this period.”
Tucker also shared this slide during the webinar of the top recipients of EDC financing in Colombia between 2012 and 2020.
As we will see later, Pacific changed its name to Frontera Energy in 2017.
In an April 2021 PBI-Canada webinar, Karen Hamilton from Above Ground also noted EDC’s support for oil and gas operations in Colombia.
She said that Parex, Gran Tierra, Canacol and Ecopetrol had all received support from EDC over the past five years. Notably, Parex is the top company receiving support: six loans of between $250 and $475 million (EDC doesn’t disclose specific amounts).
Those loans to Parex include: $50-100 million (27-05-2019): $50-100 million (22-02-2019); and $25-50 million (07-05-2018).
Hamilton also highlighted: “EDC doesn’t disclose what the companies will use the loans for commercial confidentiality reasons.”
The Above Ground report Bringing Accountability and Transparency to Export Development Canada’s Practices (November 2018) also noted: “Frontera (formerly Pacific E&P) received an EDC loan in 2014 for its oil operations in Colombia. The following year its operations at one oilfield were suspended by Colombia’s Constitutional Court, which found that the company had violated the rights of an indigenous community.”
Human rights concerns have also been noted in these PBI-Canada articles about Canacol (and their interest in fracking), Parex (and the risk the company poses to the Ibagué aquifer), Frontera (and their criminalization of social leaders in San Luis de Palenque), Gran Tierra (and the violation of Indigenous rights in Putumayo), and Ecopetrol (and their suspected links with paramilitary groups that have threatened opponents of fracking).
Photo: A community blockade in 2016 protested against the ConocoPhillips/Canacol Picoplata 1 fracking project near San Martin, Cesar.
Photo: PBI-Canada visits with social leaders who have been criminalized by Frontera Energy in San Luis de Palenque, July 1, 2022.
Emerging concerns
Gustavo Petro, the new president of Colombia, has vowed to stop issuing new permits for oil exploration, but respect existing contracts for exploration and exploitation.
Notably, before Petro took office on August 7, 2022, the previous president, Ivan Duque, oversaw the issuing of 69 new exploration blocks between 2019 and 2021. Portafolio has reported that with 26 blocks of those blocks going to Parex, 5 to Canacol Energy Ltd. (which operates as CNE Oil and Gas in Colombia), 4 to Gran Tierra Energy and 4 to Frontera Energy, 39 of the 69 blocks went to four Canadian companies.
Petro has also called for “a transition from an economy of death to an economy of life,” saying that “we cannot accept that the wealth and foreign exchange reserves in Colombia come from the export of three of humanity’s poisons: petroleum, coal, and cocaine.”
As his government navigates this transition, what role will EDC play?
EDC and hydroelectric dams in Colombia
Beyond these concerns, EDC has also been implicated in the financing of the controversial Hidroituango dam. This dam is being built in northwest Antioquia by the Colombian state-owned utility Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM).
In 2016 and 2017, EDC provided EPM with financing totalling between 500 million and one billion dollars. The Rios Vivos movement in Colombia has stated: “Since its launch in 1997, this megaproject has been imposed by violence and the forced displacement of the population, victims of the armed conflict.”
The Globe and Mail has also reported that Brookfield was one of the largest recipients of EDC financing between 2001 and 2018.
In January 2016, Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management bought a majority share (57.6 per cent) in the Colombian power generation and distribution company Isagen (and its Sogamoso hydroelectric dam). Euractiv has reported: “The Sogamoso dam in northern Colombia, [is] where, between 2009 and 2014, six activists have been killed and many more disappeared without a trace.”
We remain attentive to all of these concerns.
Photo: On November 5, 2019, PBI accompanied a meeting at the Ottawa office of EDC where Colombian human rights defenders from CREDHOS and the CCALCP legal collective expressed concern about EDC support for oil and gas operations in Colombia, notably Calgary-based Parex Resources.
Further reading:
Canada to cut subsidies to unabated fossil fuel projects as Colombia supports carbon capture (November 5, 2021)
Colombian communities raise concerns about Canadian-owned Hidrosogamoso dam’s impact on fish mortality (December 29, 2022)
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