Colombia opens new peace flank, oil attacks wane

OREANDA-NEWS. October 12, 2016. The Colombian government is opening formal peace talks with the ELN, a small rebel group that has routinely attacked the country?s oil pipelines and other infrastructure for decades.

President Juan Manuel Santos announcement of the talks, made from the Venezuelan capital Caracas, follows the unexpected popular rejection of the government?s peace deal with the main rebel group Farc in a 2 October referendum.

Formal talks between the ELN and the government are scheduled to start on 27 October in Ecuador.

ELN has historically menaced oil and gas companies operating in Colombia with kidnappings of personnel and pipeline bombings focused on state-controlled Ecopetrol's 220,000 b/d Ca?o Limn-Coveas pipeline in eastern Colombia, near the Venezuelan border.

The group of an estimated 2,000 fighters is considered more radical ideologically than the 10,000-member Farc and strongly opposed to foreign interests in Colombia's natural resource development.

Ecopetrol restarted pumping on the Cao Limon-Coveas pipeline on 8 October after a 4 October bombing that broke the group's self-declared pause in military offensives, meant to facilitate the referendum. The military blamed the ELN for the attack.

Ruptures in the oil pipeline also put the interconnected 120,000 b/d Bicentenario line out of service.

The Cano Limon-Coveas has suffered outages for approximately 79 days in the year-to-date, according to statistics compiled by Argus.

Rebel attacks, illicit valves and maintenance on pipelines have suspended Colombia's pipelines for a cumulative 151 days, according to Argus statistics.

The government and the ELN on 30 March agreed to a six-point agenda, including social participation in peace-making, rights to political debate and expression, social programs to eradicate poverty and corruption, victims, and terms for ending the conflict.

Following around a year of informal talks with the ELN, Santos conditioned the start of a formal process on the group?s liberation all hostages and a pledge to cease future kidnappings.

The ELN released a hostage yesterday and is set to release its remaining hostages "very soon… at any minute", government peace negotiator Frank Pearl said today.

The Santos government is now juggling two separate peace processes.

The Havana-based peace process with the Farc was put in jeopardy on 2 October when Colombians voted to reject the deal by a hair-splitting margin. Critics of the deal say it is too soft on Farc members accused of violent crimes.

Farc and government negotiators had been in talks since November 2012 and finalized the accord in August this year.

The government and the Farc have pledged consider the opposition's grievances and proposals for modifying the Havana accord while maintaining a bilateral ceasefire.

The ceasefire is scheduled to expire on 31 October but Colombia's defense ministry says it could be extended.

By announcing the opening of formal talks with the ELN in Venezuela and the plan to conduct them in Ecuador and other countries, the Santos government underscored the regional dimension of the long-running conflict. Colombian rebels are known to have a clandestine presence along the borders in Venezuela and Ecuador.

"If peace talks with the ELN start formally, it would be a great message: that peace has not been defeated, on the contrary, that it is now an irreversible process," Ecuador?s president Rafael Correa said today.

According to Ecuador's foreign affairs minister, Guillaume Long, peace talks will start in an undisclosed place in Quito. Ecuador will host the first and the last negotiating sessions. The rest of the dialogues will be held in several countries, Long said.