After receiving and incorporating comments and proposals from citizens, the academia, experts, and public and private entities, the Ministry of Mines and Energy (“MME”) issued Decree 328 (the “Decree”) on February 28, 2020, by means of which it establishes the guidelines to carry out Pilot Projects of Integral Research (“PPII” from its acronyms in Spanish) on Unconventional Hydrocarbon Deposits (“UHD”) by using the Multistage Hydraulic Fracturing Technique with Horizontal Perforation.

The Decree, among others, establishes that:

• Companies interested in developing a PPII must request it before the National Hydrocarbons Agency (“ANH”) and comply with the requirements established by said entity for such purpose. The ANH will also determine the contractual mechanisms for the development of these projects.
• The PPII will require the issuance of the environmental license by the National Environmental Licensing Authority (“ANLA”).
• The PPII will be developed in the following three stages:

1. Precondition stage: this is the stage of evaluation and diagnosis of social, environmental, technical and institutional conditions and environmental licensing.
2. Concomitant Stage: stage in which the activities of drilling, completion, fracturing, stimulation, and sizing of the deposit will be carried out.
3. Evaluation Stage: As the name implies, at this stage the information of each of the PPII will be evaluated in order to determine if the commercial production of UHD is possible. This evaluation will be carried out by the Evaluation Committee.

• The Evaluation Committee will be in charge of analyzing the information provided by the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (“IDEAM”); the Colombian Geological Service (“SGC”); the Alexander Van Humboldt Institute; the Ministry of Public Health; the ANH; the ANLA; and the Intersectoral Commission for Technical and Scientific Accompaniment (the “Commission”), regarding the development of each of the PPII in order to recommend the actions to be carried out for the PPII execution and define whether the PPII, individually considered, are viable or not. The Evaluation Committee will be formed by: the Government; an expert on environmental issues; an expert on hydrocarbons issues; and a civil society representative.
• Now, since the implementation of the PPII requires the participation of different entities, the Commission is created to be in charge of guiding and coordinating the follow up of the PPII development, based on the information and alerts received from the intersectoral subcommittees Technicians and scientists. The Commission will be formed by: (i) the Vice Minister of Energy; (ii) the Vice Minister of Environmental Policy and Standardization; (iii) the Vice Minister of Public Health; (iv) the Vice Minister of Knowledge, Innovation and Productivity; (v) the Vice Minister for Equal Rights; (vi) the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit; (vii) the ANH President; (viii) the SGC Director; (ix) the ANLA Director; (x) the Director of IDEAM; (xi) the Alexander Von Humboldt Institute Director; and, (xii) the Secretariat of Transparency of the Presidency of the Republic, or its delegates.
• Transparency and due access to public information must be ensured during all the PPII stages, which is why the Transparency Center is created in which all the information related to the PPII will be centralized and disseminated, in order to generate a channel of communication with citizens The Transparency Center will be managed and operated by the MME.

The Decree can be found in the following link: Decree