Mexico's Pemex Calls 170-Well Chicontepec Drilling Tender
2009年2月25日 - 5:07AM
Dow Jones News
Petroleos Mexicanos on Tuesday announced a 170-well tender for
the Chicontepec oil region where Mexico plans to be pumping up to
700,000 barrels a day by 2017.
Mexico is aggressively developing Chicontepec, which spans three
states in northern Mexico, to help offset declining production at
the country's traditional oil fields.
Pemex said it will pick the winning bid on April 7 with work
starting in early May and lasting two years. Pemex often runs into
bureaucratic delays in assigning large contracts.
Late last year Pemex announced two Chicontepec drilling tenders,
each for 500 wells, that have attracted interest from oil-services
giants Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB), Halliburton Co. (HAL) and
Weatherford International Ltd. (WFT).
Mexico's urgent need to bring new oil fields into production has
made the country a bright spot for oil-services firms during a year
when most oil companies are cutting their investment budgets due to
low oil prices.
Mexican oil production has fallen 9% over the past year to
levels not seen since 1995. At this pace the country will run out
of surplus oil for exports in around six years, putting the country
at risk of a fiscal crisis. Around a third of government revenue
comes from oil.
Chicontepec is a main pillar in Pemex's strategy to get oil
production back above 3 million barrels a day by 2015. Pemex
expects to be producing only 72,000 barrels a day at the basin this
year despite two years of aggressive drilling. But by 2015 Pemex
says Chicontepec will be producing 511,000 barrels a day, or a
sixth of total output.
Observers see Pemex's Chicontepec target as hard to meet. A well
at Chicontepec pumps only a few hundred barrels a day, compared
with a few thousand barrels at Mexico's prolific oil fields in the
Gulf of Mexico.
- By Peter Millard; Dow Jones Newswires; 5255-5001-5724;
peter.millard@dowjones.com