Missing link.

Colombia wants to be a gateway between Central and South America, and it sees pipeline and highway projects under develpment as the perfect trade framework.

Colombia and Venezuela have pledged to construct a natural gas link between the two countries. The US$170 million project would run from La Guajira in Colombia's northeast to the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo. Venezuela might also fund an $806 million expansion of Colombia's Cartagena refinery, the country's second largest.

"I think Colombia will export natural gas to Venezuela for about seven to nine years while Venezuela works on building its infrastructure to deliver gas from its east to its west, and once that happens, Colombia can begin to import gas from Venezuela,' says Luis Yepes, a former vice-president of Colombia's state-run oil company Ecopetrol and now a consultant on energy projects in Colombia.

Already, Venezuelan and Colombian planners are looking at connecting that pipeline to another natural gas line running from Colombia to Panama, estimated to cost $200 million. The connection of Venezuela to Panama, via Colombia, would allow Venezuela to export gas as far north as Mexico.

Pipelines aren't the only way Colombia wants to link to its neighbors. A $220 million electricity line running from Colombia to Panama, due in 2008, is also under discussion. The government wants to build the final leg of the Pan-American Highway as well. The Alaska-to-Argentina highway has a 137-kilometer gap between Panama and Colombia.

Environmental groups are lobbying the Panamanian government to reject the highway's extension. Juan Sevillano, a representative for Panama's National Association for the Conservation of Nature, says many Panamanians also worry that an open land corridor will encourage more South Americans to use their country as a stepping-stone for illegally entering the United States. "The Colombian government is much more in favor of this highway than Panama," says Sevillano.