Mexico’s climate law to face challenge under new president

Reuters, 7/24/2012

Enrique Peña Nieto

Mexico’s new president is unlikely to implement much of the sweeping climate change law signed in June by outgoing President Felipe Calderon amid inevitable resistance from industry and his party’s focus on accelerating economic growth and ramping-up oil and gas production, policy experts said.

The president-elect will also be under pressure to deliver a campaign goal to increase Mexico’s GDP growth to as much as 6 percent per year, making a focus on environmental issues unrealistic in his first years in office, experts said.

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Mexico’s Pemex signs deep water oil drilling safety contract

Reuters, 3/30/12

Mexico’s state oil monopoly Pemex signed a contract with a company specializing in oil spill clean ups to boost its safety controls as it plunges into exploration of deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Pemex said in a statement on Thursday that Wild Well Control, which was heavily involved in efforts to cap BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, will help Pemex comply with regulations put in place by the country’s oil watchdog the National Hydrocarbons Commision (CNH).

Pemex has limited experience in deep water drilling but estimates there are more than 29 billion barrels of crude equivalent, or 58 percent of the country’s prospective resources, in the Gulf. The country needs to exploit that oil to boost government finances, which depend heavily on crude exports.

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Mexico oil output seen stagnant next 14 yrs

Reuters, 3/1/12

Mexico’s oil production is seen stagnating at around 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) over the next 14 years unless the state oil company Pemex significantly boosts investment, the energy ministry said in a report on Wednesday.

The world’s No. 7 oil producer currently produces 2.55 million bpd of oil, as Pemex has managed to stabilize a dramatic decline in production at its largest aging fields, most notably the giant Cantarell field. Pemex has struggled to replace lost output with new discoveries and risks becoming a net oil importer within the next decade as energy demand rises.

By 2026, Cantarell’s production will drop to 150,000 bpd from the 444,000 bpd this year, the energy ministry report said. Since Cantarell’s decline, the Ku-Maloob-Zaap (KMZ) complex has become Mexico’s most important oil field. KMZ will produce 847,000 bpd this year — 32.5 percent of Mexico’s overall output.

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Op-ed: For more oil, U.S. should look to Mexico

CNN, 3/1/12

For me, the issue of skyrocketing gasoline prices came into focus about four years ago, when the national average that Americans paid at the pump reached an all-time high of $4.11 a gallon. Today, the average — up 30 cents in the last four weeks, and 13 cents in the last week alone — is about $3.70.

In the summer of 2008, I pulled up next to a gas pump off a major highway in Southern California where — apparently, a few minutes earlier –  a recreational vehicle, which held more than 100 gallons, had stopped to fill up. The price was still on the screen: $500.

Can you imagine paying $500 to put gas in your vehicle? For many of us, that’s more like a monthly car payment. But for those who live in Southern California — where the car is king, public transit is spotty and the carpool lane is almost always underused — even a tab that size hardly raises an eyebrow.

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U.S. Gas Exports Force Drivers Into Bidding War With Mexico At Pump

The Huffington Post, 2/23/12

Conservation, high prices, and hard times have led American motorists to dramatically decrease the amount of gasolinethey buy.

But how are they rewarded? With even higher prices, in part because American refiners have started exporting enormous amounts of American gasoline to Mexico and other countries.

Exports of petroleum products — mostly diesel and gasoline — have increased sharply in the last two years, to about a billion barrels in 2011. For the first time, the U.S. is exporting considerably more finished products (though not crude) than it’s importing.

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US, Mexico Close To ‘Major’ Oil-Drilling Practices Pact

Fox Business, 2/17/12

The U.S. is close to signing a “major agreement” with Mexico that establishes oil-drilling practices in the Gulf of Mexico, a shared body of water where both countries could be affected by spills, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.

The agreement could be signed as early as Monday, Salazar said while speaking at a congressional hearing. It will be a “historic agreement that has escaped a resolution and eluded the two countries for decades,” he said. Salazar said he was headed to Mexico in coming days to finalize the agreement.

Formal talks between the two countries started Aug. 30 after Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon said in May 2010–just days after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded–that their countries would work toward an agreement to facilitate the safe development of oil and natural gas in waters near both countries.

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Mexico’s 1st half oil production down 1 percent, continuing 6-year slide

Photo by Flickr user tsuda

Associated Press, 7/13/11

Mexico’s state-owned oil company says crude production fell by about 1 percent in the first half of 2011, as compared to same period last year.

Petroleos Mexicanos says the steady decline in oil output that began around 2005 “has begun to be reversed.”

The company says daily output dropped to about 2.56 million barrels in the first six months of 2011, about 27,000 barrels lower than the same period of 2010.

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U.S. Eximbank loans $1 bln to Mexico’s Pemex

Reuters, 9/30/2010

Mexican state oil monopoly Pemex said on Thursday it has secured $1 billion in long-term financing from U.S. trade bank Eximbank.

Mexico is a top oil exporter to the United States. Mexican oil production slumped by nearly a quarter between 2004 and 2009, but has stabilized in recent months.

There have been few signs production will return to the 2004 peak and the government says output will hold steady at 2.6 million barrels per day in the medium term.

Pemex hopes to issue up to 14 incentive-based contracts by the end of the year to get private sector assistance to develop its Chicontepec project.

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Pemex Oil Output May Rise After 7 Years of Decline

Bloomberg, 1/5/09

Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, may produce more crude in 2011 as new discoveries come on line, arresting seven years of plunging output.

Pemex, as the Mexico City-based company is known, may produce 2.55 million barrels a day next year, up 50,000 barrels from the forecast for 2010, Carlos Morales, head of exploration and production, said in a presentation on the company’s Web site dated Dec. 1 and released at year-end. Oil production may rise to 2.69 million barrels a day in 2012, Morales said in the presentation. Pemex pumped 2.602 million barrels a day through November 2009.

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Fitch lowers Mexico’s credit rating on oil decline

Associated Press, 11/24/09

Fitch Ratings downgraded Mexico’s credit rating Monday, saying dependence on a flagging oil sector has weakened the country’s ability to weather financial problems. Mexico’s rating remained at investment grade, but the downgrade will bring a rise in the government’s borrowing costs.

Fitch said decreased oil production has already accentuated economic problems in Mexico and output could continue to decline. Fitch said it lowered Mexico’s foreign currency Issuer Default Rating to BBB from BBB+ and its local currency IDR to BBB+ from A-. Oil income makes up more than a third of Mexico’s public sector revenues, but production has been falling as reserves dry up.

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