Schlumberger Wins $687 Million Drilling Contract In Mexico
2009年3月12日 - 3:38AM
Dow Jones News
Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, has awarded Schlumberger (SLB) a
$687 million drilling contract for the Chicontepec project in
northern Mexico, Pemex said Wednesday.
Mexico is one of the few oil countries that plans to boost
spending on oil exploration and production this year despite the
decline the price of oil. That boost in E&P is providing
opportunities for oil services firms during a year when other major
oil companies are cutting spending.
Pemex's oil production fell 9% last year, and the company is
increasing investments in an effort to reverse the trend.
Schlumberger's three-year contract will start in April. The
Houston-based oil services giant has been drilling at Chicontepec
since mid-2007, giving the company experience in a geologically
difficult oil zone that has small pockets of oil with low reservoir
pressure.
Chicontepec, an area slightly larger than Delaware that spans
three Mexican states, 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, it will be producing 511,000 barrels a day, or a
sixth of total output.
Some observers expect that target will be hard to meet. A well
at Chicontepec only pumps 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