Inter Press Service
September 3, 2025
By Umar Manzoor Shah
A report ‘Oil and Gas Expansion in the Colombian Amazon: Navigating Risks, Economics, and Pathways to a Sustainable Future, warns oil and gas projects threaten over 483,000 km² of Colombian Amazon forest, home to more than 70 indigenous groups, and risk becoming stranded assets as global fossil fuel demand declines.
BOGOTÁ and SRINAGAR, India, Aug 27 2025 (IPS) - A report has warned about the risks of expanding oil and gas exploration in the Colombian Amazon, which may undermine environmental goals, Indigenous rights, and long-term economic stability, unless the government pivots toward sustainable development pathways.
The study, “Oil and Gas Expansion in the Colombian Amazon: Navigating Risks, Economics, and Pathways to a Sustainable Future”, lays out the stakes for one of the planet’s most biodiverse and climate-critical regions.
Colombia’s Amazon region, covering nearly one-third of the country, is not only a biodiversity hotspot but also home to hundreds of indigenous communities and vast carbon-storing forests. Yet beneath its soils lie oil and gas reserves that the government and industry see as potential drivers of energy security and economic growth.
According to the report released by Earth Insight, the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), and the National Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), some political leaders in recent years have signalled openness to further exploration and production in the Amazon, despite its public commitments to environmental protection and the global push to decarbonise.
“The Colombian Amazon is at a crossroads. The decisions taken in the next few years will either lock in a path of fossil fuel dependency and ecosystem degradation or open the door to a sustainable, diversified economy,” reads the report.
Oil and gas operations in the Amazon, the report warns, could trigger cascading ecological consequences. Roads and seismic lines fragment forests; drilling operations risk oil spills; and increased human access often accelerates deforestation and wildlife loss. “Infrastructure associated with oil and gas projects tends to create long-lasting environmental footprints that extend far beyond the drilling sites themselves,” the authors claim.
The Amazon is already under stress from illegal mining, logging, and agricultural expansion. Adding industrial petroleum activity could push ecosystems toward tipping points, including irreversible shifts in forest cover and carbon balance.
Ignacio Arroniz Velasco, Senior Associate for Nature & Climate Diplomacy at Earth Insight, told IPS news that the Amazon is an integrated ecosystem. As of 2022, according to The Amazonia 80×2025 Initiative, preserving 80 percent of the Amazon by 2025 was still possible with urgent measures to safeguard the 74 percent (629 million hectares) of the Amazon that are Intact Key Priority Areas (33 percent) and with Low Degradation (41 percent); and restoring 6 percent (54 million hectares) of land with high degradation is vital to stop the current trend.
“Although still under threat from industrial expansion, ca. 80 percent of the Colombian Amazon is preserved; however, unless other Amazon countries do the same, the whole ecosystem could collapse. This would mean a shortage of food supplies, medicine (stable forest), and water (water productivity and headwaters). As well as the regulation of floods (aquatic systems) and areas with the highest carbon stock for climate stability,” Velasco told IPS.
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