Servicios intensivos en conocimiento en la industria del petróleo en Colombia

In the last decade, the hydrocarbon industry in Colombia experienced an expansion of oil production, with significant impacts on both the country's macroeconomic indicators and on the dynamics of the sector and, more importantly for this work, on the dynamics of the industry of goods and services derived from the production activity of this natural resource. The oil-based goods and services industry is characterized by technological challenges that demand innovations in the discovery and development of new deposits in different countries, which allows the growth of local companies providing services capable of adapting frontier technologies and generating local innovations. In the case of Colombia, in 2014, the presence of new local firms in the different services of the value chain of the oil goods and services sector can be observed, as well as the consolidation of local companies with experience in the sector that compete with their foreign counterparts, which are global companies that maintain a presence in different regions of the world with recognized experience. There is greater specialisation by young companies of national origin in a few markets in the chain compared with national companies with long experience in the sector and with multinational firms that participate in many services throughout the value chain. Finally, this document presents the challenges posed by the sector in terms of regulation and institutional policies to encourage hydrocarbon production activity at all stages in a context of unfavourable international prices for raw materials, and points out the potential impacts on the development of local capacities measured, for example, in terms of reductions in the supply of engineers in the sector and in their employability.