Bijao-La Guacamaya Coal Mine

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Bijao-La Guacamaya Coal Mine (Mina Bijao-La Guacamaya) is an operating coal mine in Puerto Libertador, Córdoba, Colombia.

Location

Table 1: Project-level location details

Mine Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
Bijao-La Guacamaya Coal Mine	Puerto Libertador, Córdoba, Colombia	7.882676, -75.699816 (exact)

The map below shows the exact location of the coal mine:

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Project Details

Table 2: Project status

Status	Status Detail	Opening Year	Closing Year
Operating	–	–	–

Table 3: Operation details

Note: The asterisk (*) signifies that the value is a GEM estimated figure.

Capacity (Mtpa)	Production (Mtpa)	Year of Production	Mine Type	Mining Method	Mine Size (km2)	Mine Depth (m)	Workforce Size
–	0.4	2021	Surface	Open Pit	104.42	50.0*	158.0*

Table 4: Coal resources and destination

Total Reserves (Mt)	Year of Total Reserves Recorded	Total Resources (Mt)	Coalfield	Coal Type	Coal Grade	Primary Consumer/ Destination
–	–	11.5	–	Subbituminous	Thermal	–

Table 5: Ownership and parent company

Note: To access more comprehensive data on energy ownership, please visit the Global Energy Ownership Tracker.

Owner	Parent Company	Headquarters
Sator SAS	Grupo Argos SA	Colombia

Table 6: Historical production (unit: million tonnes per annum)

ROM or Saleable	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
ROM	–	–	–	–	0.4	–	–	–	–

Expansion/Extension

Table 7: Project status

* Added capacity of a coal mine refers to the enhancement in the mine's production capabilities beyond its initial production capacity.

Status	Status Detail	Project Type	Project Phase	Added Capacity (Mtpa)*	Start Year
Shelved	Permitted	Expansion	–	0.6	–

Note: The above sections were automatically generated and are based on data from the Global Coal Mine Tracker May 2026 release.

Ownership Tree

This ownership tree is part of the Global Energy Ownership Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

Background

The Bijao-La Guacamaya Coal Mine project (known locally as Mina de carbón Bijao-La Guacamaya) is a coal mine in Puerto Libertador, Córdoba, Colombia. As of August 2021, Colombia's national mining agency listed the Bijao-La Guacamaya Mine as a project of Sator S.A.S. (Grupo Argos). Grupo Argos listed the Bijao mine as an active, open-pit mining project in a March 2015 corporate presentation, but has not mentioned the project in subsequent annual reports.

Grupo Argos's March 2015 corporate presentation showed total coal production from its Sator subsididary to be around 480,000 tonnes in 2012, 610,000 tonnes in 2013 and 670,000 tonnes in 2014, but it was unclear how much of this production came specifically from the Bijao mine. Between 2014 and 2020, the Bijao-La Guacamaya mine appears to have averaged slightly less than 500,000 tonnes of coal production per year.

Expansion (Shelved)

As of August 2021, Sator (Grupo Argos) had been granted an environmental license and received government approval for its official work plan for a mine expansion. Estimated production for the expansion was listed at 600,000 tonnes per annum, while total capacity was listed at 1 million tonnes. However, by February 2024, no further information of the expansion was available and Colombia's National Agency of Mining (Agencia Nacional de Mineria) had not provided any updates to the 2021 proposal. Without evidence of the expansion's progress or development since 2021, the expansion project was presumed shelved.

Production Status (2024–2025)

No mine-specific production figures for the Bijao-La Guacamaya mine for 2024 or 2025 were publicly available as of March 2026. Colombia's national energy planning agency UPME publishes monthly coal sector bulletins through its SIMCO system, but these report aggregate departmental or national totals rather than individual mine output. Sator's parent company, Grupo Argos, did not report mine-level tonnage data in its public financial disclosures. The mine's operational contractor, Mincivil (Vías y Explanaciones S.A.S.), held a services contract for open-pit coal extraction across mining titles 4676 and GD4-121.

Environmental and Social Context

The Bijao-La Guacamaya mine operated within the broader Alto San Jorge mining zone, where 43 mining titles covering approximately 1,272 km² had been granted by the ANM as of 2019. Officials at Paramillo National Natural Park — a 504,644-hectare protected area whose buffer zone abutted the mining zone — had issued recommendations regarding regularization of mining activity in the area to protect river basins and biodiversity. The Colombian national parks authority specifically named Sator as one of the mining-energy sector operators drawing on water resources originating inside the park boundaries.

The Zenú indigenous community, whose reservation covered only 9.6 km² of the approximately 50 km² to which its inhabitants claimed entitlement under ancestral rights, occupied the same territory as the licensed mining area in Puerto Libertador municipality. Community leaders described the progressive encroachment of mining titles on indigenous lands as a source of ongoing tension.

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Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of world coal mines, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Coal Mine Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.