Pemex Doubles Reserve Estimate At One Of World’s Largest Finds

Mexico’s Pemex has reevaluated the reserves contained at its Ixachi discovery and now estimates its 2P (proven and probable) reserves at 750 million barrels of oil equivalent, S&P Global Platts reports, quoting Pemex’s deputy director for exploration, Juan Antonio Escalera. The discovery’s P3 reserves (proven, possible and probable) are estimated at 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The discovery is therefore the fourth-largest onshore one globally for the last ten years, Escalera noted.

Currently, there are three wells operating at Ixachi, with two of them drilled in the last few months as Pemex seeks to stem a decline in the national oil total resulting from natural depletion and lack of investment in new exploration.

Plans for the onshore field in the state of Veracruz are ambitious: Pemex plans to drill more than 40 production wells, which will require an investment of US$1.5 billion. Yet this pales in comparison to the expected value of the oil to be extracted from the field.

"The expected value of the total production of Ixachi is worth $40 billion," the company’s general director said at an industry event this week. "Based on these numbers, you can see how profitable this project will be."

Peak production at Ixachi is seen to occur about 2022 at daily rates of 80,000 bpd of crude and 720 million cu ft of natural gas. The crude produced at Ixachi is light, of which Pemex definitely needs more to boost its gasoline production and reduce reliance on imports from the United States.

Pemex recently reported its crude oil production had declined to 1.76 million bpd in October, one of the lowest monthly production rates since records began in 1990. Mexico’s President-elect, however, has big plans for the country’s oil industry. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged Mexico will pump 2.6 million bpd of crude by the end of his six-year term.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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