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Mexican report: Pemex needs outside help
Jessica Bernstein-Wax Associated Press Writer
Mexico’s state-owned oil company must work with outside firms to boost sagging production and gain access to better equipment, the federal Energy Department and Petroleos Mexicanos said in a report issued March 30.
Pemex particularly needs help tapping deepwater oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, where extraction on the U.S. side is changing pressure conditions that could diminish Mexican reserves before they’re tapped, according to the report.
“While Mexico has only drilled six oil wells in recent years, on the U.S. side of the Gulf of Mexico, 167 wells are drilled each year,” the report said. “As a result, Pemex needs to work with other companies to develop diverse activities ... and to obtain better equipment and maximize the country’s oil income.”
Pemex, a top foreign supplier of crude to the United States, recently reported a 2007 net loss of $1.48 billion despite soaring world oil prices. The company has had to increase fuel imports in the face of falling domestic production and rising demand.
Debate emotional The country is currently engaged in an emotional national debate over the state oil monopoly’s future, with President Felipe Calderon supporting more private partnering for the drilling of Mexican crude.
Mexico’s constitution bans most outside involvement in the company, although the government has eased restrictions slightly in the past 15 years to contract with private companies. The March 30 report is among many voices saying outside help is needed to modernize the company.
But critics, led by former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his Democratic Revolution Party, have called private investment in Pemex a threat to national sovereignty and accused Calderon’s administration of seeking to sell off the whole industry — a charge the president denies.
Mexico’s ruling National Action Party delayed the introduction of a bill into the lower house of Congress the week of March 24 that would allow the state oil monopoly to contract with private and foreign companies to extract deepwater reserves from the Gulf of Mexico.
The measure’s author, federal congressman Alonso Manuel Lizaola, said party legislators will likely add the initiative to an upcoming energy reform package.
New refineries needed At a news conference March 30, Pemex director Jesus Reyes also said the company needs to build new refineries, or risk gasoline imports increasing from 40 percent to half of the country’s consumption. Calderon announced plans for a new refinery earlier in March.
“It’s indispensable for the country to strengthen Pemex so we won’t keep losing opportunities,” Reyes said.
The company’s production dropped 5.3 percent last year to an average 3.1 million barrels a day, primarily due to plunging output at the massive Cantarell oil field off the coast of Veracruz state.
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