ABSTRACT
Colombia produces minerals and oil, but it is not a mining or petroleum-rich economy. This chapter provides an overview of the principal milestones in the history of mining and petroleum in Colombia, with the objective of understanding the government's position towards foreign investment in these sectors. In the case of petroleum, we concentrate on the evolution of the Empresa Colombiana de Petrleos (ECOPETROL) and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country. The Colombian state has traditionally taken a rentier approach to ECOPETROL. The chapter argues that Colombia has not experienced energy and resource nationalism at a comparable level to other countries of the region due to the low capacity of the state to develop these sectors in the absence of private and foreign investment. From the middle of the nineteenth century, it was known that large deposits of thermal coal exited on the La Guajira peninsula in the north of Colombia.
