Andres Camacho speaks during a press conference in Bogotá on May 24, 2024.

Colombia’s top energy official is blaming natural gas distributors for the hike in prices faced by homes and businesses, saying the companies are opting for more costly imported fuel.

Grupo Vanti, the Andean nation’s biggest natural gas distributor, announced that starting this month prices in cities like Bogotá and Medellín will rise as much as 36% as a shortage of the fuel forces Colombia to rely on imports. Industry group Naturgas also confirmed that other companies are also charging more given shipments of liquefied natural gas are two or three times more expensive than domestic supplies.

With Colombia’s natural gas reserves dwindling and President Gustavo Petro refusing to grant new exploration licenses as he pushes to wean the country off fossil fuels, LNG imports to supply factories and homes began coming in at the end of last year.

Energy Minister Andres Camacho, however, continues to deny that there’s a need for imports. Companies are reselling gas in the secondary market, he said Thursday in a post on X, which has pushed prices higher while they also “opt to import gas, transferring those costs to residential users.”

Along with an increase in the minimum wage for this year, higher fuel prices are driving inflation higher, according to José Ignacio López, president of economic think tank ANIF in Bogotá. There is also an “indirect” impact on the costs of energy that companies face that may be passed on to consumers, he added.

Consumer prices rose more than expected at the beginning of the year, backing a surprise decision from the central bank to pause its rate-cutting cycle.

Discussions between gas distributors and Petro’s government, meanwhile, are starting to become tense. After an earlier post from Camacho calling on the public services watchdog to investigate the distributors, Vanti Chief Executive Officer Rodolfo Anaya said the minister’s pronouncement was “unfair.”

“The increase in the price of gas is not in anyone’s interest: neither the users, nor the companies, nor the government, but it is a fact that we must understand and face,” Anaya said in a post on X. “My invitation is to continue working constructively on solutions to mitigate this reality.”

Naturgas said that the watchdog visited its offices on Wednesday and that it will continue to cooperate with officials in their investigation.