Operating for only five years, Canacol Energy has boosted its oil production to 9,000 barrels a day and expanded potential oil fields to 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares), making the oil company the country’s fifth-largest landowner.

Since its establishment in 2008, the oil and gas company has consistently acquired large land holdings and has discovered several oil fields with commercial-sized production.

“We have such a huge amount of acreage with such high potential that we’d like to bring in some heavy-hitting companies. We need to bring big companies. We are always looking for partners that can bring both technical expertise and financial worth to execute some of our larger projects,” said President and CEO Charle Gamba.

To date, Canacol Energy has joint ventures with ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Sinochem and Pacific Rubiales for specific projects. By 2015, it is aiming to produce between 15,000 and 20,000 barrels of oil and gas a day.

With eight active fields — seven in Colombia and one in Ecuador, collectively with a book value of $720 million — Canacol continues to attract the industry’s attention and is highly optimistic of steady growth.

Aside from its active assets, Canacol Energy also has 26 exploration blocks, with 200 undrilled opportunities for oil and gas, which contain a potential output of more than 2 billion barrels a day.

“Essentially, we offer high production growth at very low risk to our investors,” Gamba said.

– Originally prepared by Global Media for The Japan Times Special Report on Colombia 2013 (Credit: Philippe Le Saux)