More than a third of Colombia’s exports come from the oil industry, directly linking performance in oil-related activities to the national economy. However, corruption risks threaten to disrupt growth within and beyond the sector. Addressing this challenge will require greater transparency in the oil industry as well as stronger governance—both of which could also contribute to mitigating environmental impacts from oil extraction and benefiting communities in oil-producing areas.
The Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption (LTRC) project, a joint initiative of the Brookings Institution and Results for Development, in collaboration with Colombian civil society organization, Crudo Transparente, and Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) have applied a corruption diagnostic tool in the extractives industry to the oil industry in the municipalities of Tauramena and Maní in Colombia’s department of Casanare. The tool provides a way to identify corruption risks with the highest probability of occurring and the greatest potential to cause damage, then consequently develops an action plan aimed at reducing those risks.
The study and the resulting action plan take a regional perspective that considers the needs of the country’s outer region, rather than solutions dictated from Bogotá. The inclusion of the regional perspective allows for a more comprehensive approach to addressing the risks of corruption in Colombia’s oil industry.
