Cartagena Refinery e-SAF Pilot Project

Ecopetrol, Colombia's state-owned oil and gas company, is developing an e-SAF pilot plant at its Cartagena Refinery (Reficar) on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, leveraging the green hydrogen output of its on-site Coral Project. Coral is Ecopetrol's first commercial-scale green hydrogen plant at Cartagena, built around a 5 MW U.S.-supplied electrolyzer (installation began in 2025) and designed to produce up to 800 tonnes of green hydrogen per year for the refinery, replacing a portion of its grey hydrogen demand. Coral itself follows an earlier 2022 pilot at the same refinery using a 50 kW PEM electrolyzer and 270 on-site solar panels that produced approximately 20 kg per day of 99.999% purity green hydrogen. On June 20, 2026, Ecopetrol signed an alliance with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) to carry out 24 months of feasibility and engineering studies on the Cartagena Power-to-Liquid pilot plant, with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. GIZ is contributing Power-to-X technical expertise to the studies, which will assess technical and commercial viability and underpin a subsequent final investment decision; industrial construction is targeted toward the end of the decade. The CO₂ source for the e-SAF synthesis loop, the specific Power-to-Liquid technology pathway (Fischer-Tropsch vs. methanol-to-jet), pilot capacity in tonnes of e-SAF per year, capex, and offtake structure have not yet been publicly disclosed.