Ecuador has sharply increased tariffs on Colombian crude oil transported through its pipeline system, deepening a trade and energy dispute between the two Andean neighbours that has already disrupted electricity exports and bilateral commerce.

Ecuador said on Tuesday it had raised the tariff paid by Colombia for each barrel of oil transported through the state-owned Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) by 900%, lifting the fee from $3 to $30 per barrel. The move came in response to Colombia’s decision to suspend electricity exports to Ecuador from Feb. 1, 2026.

Bogotá has yet to issue an official response to the tariff increase.

The dispute has widened beyond trade into energy cooperation and crude transportation, straining relations between the two countries amid longstanding tensions over border security and cooperation against drug trafficking.

Without explicitly referring to the trade conflict, Colombia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy last week issued a resolution suspending international electricity transactions (TIE) with Ecuador, describing the measure as a preventive step aimed at protecting Colombia’s energy sovereignty and security amid climate-related pressures on domestic supply.

Colombia is a key electricity supplier to Ecuador, particularly during periods of drought. Ecuador has faced prolonged power cuts in recent years, including in 2024 and 2025, in a country where roughly 70% of electricity generation depends on hydropower.

Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro said his country had previously acted in solidarity during Ecuador’s worst drought in decades. “I hope Ecuador appreciated that when it needed us, we responded with energy,” Petro said last week.

Ecuador’s Environment and Energy Minister Inés Manzano said the crude transport tariff increase applied to Colombia’s state oil company Ecopetrol and private firms exporting oil through the SOTE. “We made a change in the tariff value,” Manzano said. “Instead of three dollars, it is now 30 dollars per barrel.”

According to Ecuadorian news outlets, the SOTE transported nearly 10,300 barrels per day of Colombian crude in November, shipped by Ecopetrol and private companies.

Manzano has also said Ecuador will impose new fees on Colombian crude transported through the Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados (OCP) pipeline, citing reciprocity following Colombia’s suspension of electricity exports.

The trade conflict began last week when Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, a close political ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, announced a 30% tariff on imports from Colombia, effective from February. Speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Noboa said the measure was justified by what he described as insufficient cooperation from Bogotá in combating drug trafficking and organised crime along the shared border.

“We have made real efforts of cooperation with Colombia,” Noboa said in a post on social media, adding that Ecuador faces a trade deficit of more than $1 billion with its neighbour. “But while we insist on dialogue, our military continues confronting criminal groups tied to narcotrafficking on the border without cooperation.”

Colombia’s foreign ministry rejected the move as unilateral and contrary to Andean Community (CAN) trade rules, sending a formal protest note to Quito. Bogotá has proposed a high-level ministerial meeting involving foreign affairs, defence, trade and energy officials to de-escalate the dispute, though no date has been confirmed.

Colombia’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism (MinCIT) responded by announcing a 30% tariff on 23 Ecuadorian products, which have not yet been specified, with the option to extend the measure to additional goods. Trade Minister Diana Marcela Morales Rojas said the tariff was proportional, temporary and intended to restore balance to bilateral trade.

“This levy does not constitute a sanction or a confrontational measure,” the ministry said in a statement. “It is a corrective action aimed at protecting the national productive apparatus.”

Business groups say Colombia exports mainly electricity, medicines, vehicles, cosmetics and plastics to Ecuador, while importing vegetable oils and fats, canned tuna, minerals and metals. Ecuador’s exporters federation, Fedexpor, said non-oil exports to Colombia rose 4% between January and November last year, with more than 1,130 products entering the Colombian market.

Colombia and Ecuador share a 600-kilometre border stretching from the Pacific coast to the Amazon rainforest, a region where Colombian guerrilla groups and binational criminal organisations operate, including networks involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling and illegal mining.

Although Quito and Bogotá have both signalled willingness to engage in dialogue, the rapid escalation of tariffs and energy measures has raised concerns among exporters, energy producers and regional analysts about the risk of prolonged disruption to trade and cooperation between two of the Andean region’s closest economic partners.

The extraction of Nicolás Maduro on Saturday was meant to signal the end of an era. Instead, it has exposed an uncomfortable truth that may loom over Washington weeks and months after the “shock-and-awe” attacks in central Caracas have waned from headlines: was Venezuela’s democratic opposition sidelined at the very moment it appeared closest to victory?

Just weeks earlier, María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the symbolic leader of Venezuela’s opposition, had laid out her Freedom Manifesto — a sweeping blueprint for a Venezuelan-led democratic transition rooted in dignity, elections, free markets and the return of millions of exiles. She framed the coming moment not as an American intervention, but as a national rebirth steered by Venezuelans themselves.

That vision now appears to be colliding with a far more transactional reality.

Following Maduro’s capture in a U.S.-led operation, President Donald Trump declined to elevate Machado or her movement into any formal role. Instead, senior U.S. officials have coalesced around Delcy Rodríguez – Maduro’s longtime lieutenant and overseer of the oil sector — as Washington’s primary interlocutor in Caracas. Trump publicly praised Rodríguez’s cooperation while dismissing Machado as a “very nice woman” who “lacks the support” to lead the country.

On Monday, Delsy Rodríguez took the oath of office in the presence of the Ambassadors to China, Iran and Russia. The scene from the National Assembly recalls the sham investiture of Maduro on January 10, 2025,  and sends a dire signal to the internationl community:  Does oil security matter more than a secure democracy?

White House insiders told U.S. media that Trump had never warmed to Machado, “because his feelings got hurt”, reads the Daily Beast. According to an article on Monday in The Washington Post, the president declined to pick Machado because she committed the “ultimate sin” of offending his pride, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” cites the newspaper’s sources.

Having lost the Oslo podium as the world’s “peace president,” personal grievance and strategic calculation have marked the White House’s decision to annoint a “moderate” in Miraflores. But Rodríguez is no moderate, and her penchant for state repression remains intact. A  recent article in the Wall Street Journal affirms that Washington is willing to tolerate a Maduro 2.0 — a Chavista continuity government — so long as it cooperates on oil, narcotics enforcement and geopolitical alignment.

On the ground in Caracas, the mood reflects that ambiguity. There have been no mass celebrations, no release of political prisoners, and no clear roadmap. Power remains concentrated within the same military-backed elites that have pillaged Venezuela for over three decades, even as Maduro himself awaits trial in New York on charges expected to exceed those once brought against Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

U.S. officials insist this is realism, not betrayal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that squeezing the regime economically and forcing compliance on security and oil will eventually produce leverage. But he has stopped short of demanding immediate elections — a notable omission given that the opposition already won one.

Machado’s Freedom Manifesto now reads less like a transition plan and more like a rebuke. It imagined a Venezuela where sovereignty flowed from the ballot box, not from foreign capitals; where dignity, not expediency, guided reconstruction; and where Venezuelans — not external powers — chose their leaders.

Instead, Trump has suggested that the United States will “run” Venezuela, even as it leaves the same repressive security apparatus intact. The contradiction is stark: maximum news coverage abroad, minimal transformation on the ground.

The question, then, is not only whether Trump sidetracked María Corina Machado, but whether the United States has traded a rare democratic opening for short-term gains. If Chavismo survives without Maduro — its prisons full, its generals untouched, its oil flowing under U.S management — the Nobel laureate’s blueprint may yet stand as the document of a revolution deferred.

And history may judge that Venezuela was not lost for lack of courage at home, but for lack of conviction abroad. In the words of Mexican historian Enrique Krauze, the end-game is inevitable: “If geopolitics seeks to turn Venezuela into a pawn on its chessboard, the people will take to the streets. They have chosen a legitimate president: Edmundo González. And they have a moral leader: María Corina Machado. Obstacles may arise, but Venezuela’s liberation is irreversible.”