# [WARNING] Ecuador Warns of Ongoing Blackout Risk, Colombia Power Imports Minimal

*Monday, October 26, 2026 at 3:43 PM UTC — Hamer Intelligence Services Desk*

**Detected**: 2026-10-26T15:43:19.265Z (2h ago)
**Tags**: MARKET, energy, power, LatAm, diesel, hydropower, ElNino
**Sources**: OSINT
**Permalink**: https://hamerintel.com/data/alerts/28066.md
**Source**: https://hamerintel.com/summaries

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**Summary**: Ecuador’s president confirmed the country remains at risk of further blackouts due to a lack of new firm generation and minimal power imports from Colombia. This underscores regional hydropower stress and potential demand destruction and cost pressures for metals, agriculture processing, and fuels in the Andean region.

## Detail

The key new information is from Ecuador’s energy-related statements: President Daniel Noboa confirmed that Ecuador is still at risk of power outages due to insufficient new firm generation capacity and very limited electricity imports from Colombia (report 57). A union representative from Quito’s electric utility (reports 49–50) added that the system is relying heavily on existing assets like the Coca Codo Sinclair hydro plant (up to 1,200 MW) and that the lack of Colombian power imports plus the expected return of the El Niño dry pattern could push the system back toward rationing.

From a supply–demand perspective, Ecuador is a modest oil producer and exporter and a user of hydropower for domestic demand. The principal market channel here is not a direct cut to crude exports, but broader regional electricity stress in the Andean power pool. If Colombia cannot reliably export power to Ecuador, both systems have less flexibility to cope with hydrological volatility. This is already causing elevated operating costs for industry and services (prior interviews citing heavy genset diesel use during previous blackouts). Prolonged or recurrent outages can trim industrial metals demand (refining, smelting, cement, and steel in Ecuador and potentially Colombia) and reduce agricultural processing throughput (banana, shrimp, cocoa and coffee processing), while lifting local diesel and fuel oil demand for backup generation.

For global markets, the effect is second order but can exceed the 1% threshold in specific contracts on headline days: (1) regional hydropower stress and forced diesel burn tends to be mildly bullish for middle distillates (gasoil/diesel futures) and HSFO in the Atlantic basin; (2) any perception that Andean power systems are structurally underinvested, coinciding with El Niño/La Niña swings, can support a small risk premium in Colombian and Ecuadorian sovereign and FX risk, indirectly feeding into EM FX indices; (3) if rationing escalates, export volumes of some soft commodities (bananas, shrimp) can be disrupted at the margin, modestly supportive for those niches.

Historical precedents include prior Andean power crises (e.g., Colombia/Ecuador drought-driven rationing episodes) which triggered local demand destruction but also episodic spikes in regional fuel demand and basis differentials. The likely duration is medium term (quarters to a few years) given that the president is explicitly citing a structural lack of new firm capacity. This risk is therefore persistent rather than a one-off, with the main tradable impact in refined product cracks and, to a lesser degree, EM local debt/FX pricing in the region.

**AFFECTED ASSETS:** ICE Gasoil, NY Harbor ULSD, Fuel oil cracks (Atlantic basin), COPUSD, ECV sovereign bonds, Regional Andean electricity-linked equities