Mexican Oil Output Down by 9.2% in January

Rig Zone ^ | February 23, 2009 | EFE

[thackney]

Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos produced an average of 2.68 million barrels of crude oil per day in January, down 9.2 percent from the same month last year.

Pemex announced its January results on Friday, noting that for the first time the Ku Maloob Zaap heavy oil field in the Gulf of Mexico became the country's most productive oil field with an average output of 787,000 bpd.

It took over that position from Cantarell, which had been the most productive field since 1979 but continued its rapid decline, falling 38 percent to 772,000 bpd.

Natural gas production, meanwhile, climbed to a record high for a month of January to 7.09 billion cubic feet per day.

Crude oil exports for the first month of the year totaled 1.36 million bpd, down 2.66 percent relative to January of last year, while Pemex's revenues from the sale of crude to its customers abroad plunged 55.2 percent to $1.59 billion.

That was due in large part to a sharp drop in the average price of oil last month, $37.65, down from a price of $80.15 in January 2008.

Pemex produced 1.56 million bpd of petroleum products, mainly gasoline and diesel, while sales of those products, including imports, came in at a total of 1.75 million bpd, valued at 35.65 billion pesos (some $2.54 billion).

The company sold 772,200 bpd of gasoline, 329,700 bpd of which was imported.

In January, Pemex produced just over 1 million tons of petrochemical products.

President Felipe Calderon last year sought to push a controversial plan through Congress to overhaul Pemex, including allowing the cash-strapped company to take on private oil firms as full partners in the exploration and drilling of new deepwater deposits in the Gulf of Mexico.

But leftist lawmakers fiercely opposed the initial bill, claiming that the aim of the government was to privatize Pemex, created after President Lazaro Cardenas' nationalization of the oil industry in 1938.

After months of debate, a revised bill was passed that gives Pemex more freedom to undertake projects with private firms, but excludes the provisions of Calderon's original initiative that would have allowed them a stake in the oil or any eventual profits.

Pemex said in January it plans to invest a record $19.4 billion this year as part of a series of countercyclical spending programs intended to combat the global economic crisis.

The company is trying to boost production at Ku Maloob Zaap and an onshore oil project known as Chicontepec, but most analysts say it is unlikely the lower output at Cantarell -- located in the Gulf beneath Mexico's Bay of Campeche -- can be offset by higher production at other fields.

[thackney]

[Red Badger]

Wells Drying up, or workers?...............

[Paladin2]

HMM, that’s a problem. Are illegal immigrants down by 10% also? The US needs multiple barrels per day of free crude from Mexico to accommodate the outflow of Mexican folks.

[Paladin2]

Multiple barrels per day per illegal (both legacy and additional).

[thackney]

Lack of investment into exploration and facilities. Mexico has used Pemex as its cash cow for too long without bothering to buy feed for the cow.

Oil fields are not magical pools that flow forever, regardless of the theories proposed...

[DuncanWaring]

Wells. The Mexicans don’t really have the knack of running an oil field properly.

And they’re constitutional prohibited from hiring competent help from “outside”.

S***s to be them. (S***s to be their more-prosperous neighbor, too.)

[SwinneySwitch]

Pemex ping!

[Uriah_lost]

Funny how that works, ain't it? The Mexican aristocracy is using up its resources and shipping their social welfare problems north.

[eaglestar]

Neither. Everyone’s cutting production under the excuse of maintenance to keep the gas price per gallon up due to over-supply. If they continue steady output, the price per gallon would be substantially lower.

[UCFRoadWarrior]

There have been a number of projections that Mexico will run out of oil by 2012 or so.

The US will need to pick up its production...and waiting to boot Obama out in 2012 may be too late

Of course Mexican petro is all state run and owned...no private investment

[thackney]

Is that why Mexico Oil production also fell the previous year? and the year before that? and again?

Mexico's crude oil production has been falling since 2004.

[thackney]

EIA, Table 2.2 World Oil Supply, selected countries, 2004-2008
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t22.xls