| Sumario: | This article analyzes the case of the District of Barrancabermeja (Santander, Colombia) and evaluates the vulnerabilities and socioeconomic impacts due to the COVID-19 emergency. The city represents a case of interest for being headquarter of the country’s largest oil refinery which is crucial for the hydrocarbon sector and the petrochemical industry that stimulate other sectors of the economy. The methodology has a mixed-type research approach, where national and local information was taken as a reference: official statistics from DANE, Fasecolda databases (information on formal workers registered in Barrancabermeja) and the results of the survey regarding the Emergency generated by COVID-19 of the Center for Regional Studies of Magdalena Medio (CER).
The effects of the crisis are evident in indicators such as local oil refining, where average load of crude oil in KBD decreased from 218,612 in 2019 to 179,210 in 2020 (-18.0%). Situation that affected other indicators of the economy such as employment: according to Fasecolda data, the pandemic generated the loss of more than 5 thousand formal jobs during 2020, which, at the end of 2021, still they had not fully recovered. It is found that the areas that suffer greater poverty in the different dimensions and have greater vulnerability are the families from communes 3, 5, 6 and 7, where labor informality is highlighted as one of the variables with the highest incidence. The most affected groups were people with comorbidities, single mothers and young people who were the most likely to lose their jobs.
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