Details

This is an American-made map of Columbia’s oil and petroleum fields as they appeared in March of 1939. The map shows Columbia, from the Arauca district bordering Venezuela in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending south until the border of Ecuador.

The main map offers a detailed view of Columbia, including towns and cities, railroads, topography, and other common cartographic features. What distinguishes this map is the fields of color coding, which indicate the presence of oil and petroleum extraction initiatives throughout the country. From the oil-producing regions in the heart of the country, pipelines, roads, and railroads extend northwest towards the Pacific coast. We see one major pipeline marked in red, which culminates just south of the metropolis of Cartagena. A second pipeline (in green) follows it out of the jungle but culminates further south in the town of Coveñas. An interesting detail is the inclusion of passenger ferries from Coveñas to New York (1925 miles) and Le Havre, France (4351 miles). Larger towns such as Barranquilla in the north also show the flight connections into the interior (Bogota and Cali, for example) and out of the map and abroad. This is, in other words, not simply a testament to the early Columbian oil and petroleum industry but also a relic of early national and international travel.

An inset in the upper right corner establishes the physical relationship with Columbia’s neighbor to the east while simultaneously showing the so-called Barco Concession. From this, it is clear that most of the petroleum-producing fields in this area lie in a band relatively close to the Venezuelan border. A second inset is found in the lower right corner of the map, which depicts the Restrepo Concession west of the La Salinas Fault. The map shows that this is still an area under development. Despite having a small number of drilling and production wells, most of the extraction features listed here result from prospection (including a new deep test location). A third and final inset is found in the lower right corner, which shows the Infantas and La Cira Fields. These were part of the Demares Concession and extended northwards from the Colorado River and Infantas towards Barranca Bermeja, following an established pipeline and railroad.

The map was lithographed in early 1939 by Baltimore-based A. Hoen & Co. for the International Map Company in New York.

Context is Everything

Colombia is Latin America’s fourth largest oil and petroleum producer and among the top twenty producers globally. In 1918, crude oil was first discovered in the La Cira-Infantas field in Barrancabermeja. When production started, the well produced around 40 barrels a day. A 100 years on the La Cira-Infantas field now produces 46,000 barrels daily. In total, Colombia has about 860 thousand barrels per day.

For a more detailed history of oil production in Columbia, we refer to Juan Carlos Echeverry’s essay on the subject, published online by the Asociación Civil Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA) (click here).