Mexico’s Pemex Boasts Billion-Barrel Oil Discovery

Mexico’s Pemex has discovered a gigantic oilfield in the state of Tabasco that could hold as much as one billion barrels of oil, Octavio Romero Oropeza, chief executive of the state oil firm, said in an interview with the Mexican state broadcaster on Sunday.  

Pemex, the most heavily indebted oil company in the world, has been struggling to reverse the decline in its oil production, even after leftist nationalist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to power in 2018, offering increased support to the state oil firm and promising increased production for a Mexican ‘energy independence.’

The new discovery in Tabasco is a “gigantic field,” Pemex’s CEO told the state broadcaster, comparing the oil find with the giant oilfield in Quesqui, which Pemex said it had discovered in 2019. The Quesqui field is the most important discovery in the country since 1987, Pemex said at the time.

Details on the new discovery will be unveiled on March 18, Romero said on Sunday.

López Obrador came to power with the promise to increase state support for Pemex and make the state-run major the pillar of a turnaround for the country’s declining oil production.

López Obrador has also been a vocal critic of the energy reform of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, who opened in 2013 Mexico’s oil and gas sector to private investment for the first time in seven decades.

The incumbent Mexican President seeks a greater role for Pemex in reversing the downward trend in Mexican oil production and is criticizing the energy reform and the foreign oil firms for failing to do so.    

Petróleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is officially known, will continue to focus on oil exploration and production as well as a future $8-billion refinery, Dos Bocas, which is planned for López Obrador’s home state of Tabasco.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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