Colombia’s message in New York this month will be clear: the country is open for energy investment. It needs to be. Domestic gas supply is tight, and new capital is the only lasting fix.

Investors will test that message against a live case. Canacol Energy, a key gas supplier to the Caribbean Coast, has been restructuring under the supervision of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta since November 18, 2025. Colombia’s Superintendencia de Sociedades recognized the Canadian proceedings. A year later, the outcome depends largely on decisions in Bogotá.

The problem is the contracts

Canacol’s legacy contracts were not built for today’s market. Its gas sales contracts carry fixed prices that, as the Alberta court found, are not benchmarked to market. Its ship-or-pay pipeline contracts require fixed tariffs whether or not the gas flows. Production has fallen. Gas market prices have increased. The obligations have not.

No investor will commit new funds under those terms. In June 2026, therefore, the Alberta court authorized Canacol to disclaim the contracts so they can be reset on terms that would make investment feasible. For that order to take effect in Colombia, Colombia must recognize it.

Bogotá says one thing; its file says another

The government says its priorities are protecting users and keeping gas flowing. Those are legitimate goals. It says it prefers a negotiated solution. However, in the face of off-takers public calls for a takeover of Canacol, the government appears to be prepared to do so. Regulators placed Canacol’s Colombian operations under special surveillance, and the Minister of Mines and Energy said the Superintendencia de Sociedades would not allow a Canadian company operating in Colombia to “simply abandon a market.”

The record tells investors more than the rhetoric does. When the Superintendencia asked state agencies for their views on recognition, the responses focused on the risks of resetting the contracts: compensation owed to counterparties, possible tariff increases, and continuity of supply. What they did not ask for is just as telling. Even after inviting them to conciliation hearings to find solutions, they have not ask proactively the distributors and intermediaries who buy Canacol’s gas at fixed contract prices, or the pipeline operator paid regardless of throughput, to give anything up.

What a new investor is being asked to do

Remove the legal detail and the proposition to any incoming investor is simple. It would have to:

•  underwrite the guaranteed margins of local intermediaries and the pipeline operator, and

•  fund below-market gas for commercial and residential users.

That is not a restructuring process. It is essentially mantaining a subsidy system, with foreign capital as the only party being asked to pay for it. Few investors will agree.

Delay is also a decision

Every month without a resolution reduces what any investor can rescue. The gas does not stay in the ground for free, and the financing keeping Canacol alive does not last forever. A drawn-out process combined with protected legacy contracts and uneconomic pricing does not prevent a supply crisis. It makes one more likely, and that is the risk Bogotá says it wants to avoid.

What investors will be watching

The government has the tools to fix this. It regulates every party on the other side of these contracts. A credible resolution would include:

•  a settlement overviewed by the government, in which the distributors, intermediaries, and pipeline operator are also part of the solution, not just the restructuring company and its new investors;

•  a prompt, reasoned decision on recognition of the Alberta orders; and

•  protection for essential-market users through a transparent system of public funding instead of passing the cost on to new private capital.

Colombia does not need to choose between consumers and investors. It does need to stop considering foreign capital as the only party that can be asked to give ground.

Investors in New York will hear Colombia’s pitch this month. Many of them will also be reading the Canacol docket.