In June, Mexico’s national oil company Pemex announced its largest discoveries of oil and gas in 5 years. Located in the shallow-water basin of the Gulf of Mexico offshore Tabasco and Campeche, the four new fields are estimated to hold 350 million bbl of oil.
Speaking at the Mexican Petroleum Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico in June, Pemex’s Chief Executive Officer Emilio Lozoya said the fields are expected to produce 200,000 B/D of oil and 170 MMcf/D of natural gas. “The certain prospect of 200,000 extra barrels of production is very good news for Pemex, for the industry, and for our country,” Lozoya was quoted as saying in press reports.
He also said first production could be achieved in 16 months. However, Jose Antonio Escalera, director of exploration at Pemex, said in a later interview that the fields would need about 3 years to achieve maximum output.
Three of the fields are located in an offshore area known as the Litoral de Tabasco and may add a combined 100,000 B/D of light crude along with 90 MMcf/D of gas. The larger single field in the Sonda de Campeche is expected to add 100,000 B/D of oil and 80 MMcf/D of gas. The last major discoveries on this scale for Pemex were the Tsimin-Xux and Ayatsil fields in 2010.
A Pemex statement credited the discoveries to the company’s use of the latest seismic technology and said it is the “first tangible result in exploration activities” following the historic energy reform laws passed in August of last year.
Underscoring the optimism that the new fields represent, Lozoya said the company is now on track for a “clear reversal” of its decade of downward production. In 2004, Mexican crude production peaked at 3.4 million B/D and in the first part of this year, daily production was about 2.28 million B/D.
The Pemex announcement was made about a month before Mexico’s first auction of 14 shallow-water exploration blocks in the same area as the new discoveries. The new Mexican regulatory body, the National Commission of Hydrocarbons, prequalified 36 companies for participation in the first auction last month. The next rounds will be for shallow-water development fields and onshore fields.
