By: Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, July 8, 2022
The CEO of Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), Octavio Romero Oropeza, officially inaugurated the Mexican Petroleum Congress (CMP), which is being held this week in Villahermosa, Tabasco, a key city for the institution’s boom due to the proliferation of crude oil exploration and extraction in the 1970s, and which has once again become fundamental thanks to the discovery and exploitation of new deposits.
During his presentation, the director emphasized that the main strength of an oil company is its hydrocarbon reserves, and according to the level of proven reserves, is the level of production. He pointed out that the country had a declining trend in reserves over the years, so that in 2000 it reached 25 billion barrels of crude oil equivalent (bpce), and at the beginning of this administration it was only 7 billion.
Romero Oropeza emphasized that, almost four years into the current administration, not only have the reserves that have been extracted been 100% replenished, but they have increased by 400 million bpce, so that due to the more than 60 billion bpce that Mexico has as a prospective resource in its conventional and non-conventional basins, it is viable as an oil country.
He indicated that the change in exploration strategy -focused on conventional shallow water and onshore basins- has been the basis for their incorporation into production through a concept of accelerated field development, as well as for the increase of the 1P reserve in this administration, during which 39 new fields have been discovered, and at the end of June of this year, another eight new fields were located in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche.
Among these new additions are the Quesqui, Tupilco profundo and Ixachi fields, with the goal of drilling 78 new exploratory wells by the end of 2022, which will surely lead to the incorporation of new fields.
The PEMEX director pointed out that the institution currently has the best performance in commercial success of all private and national oil companies with 47%, placing it above the largest operators in the world; likewise, its discovery cost is 3.4 dollars per barrel, lower than the world average and lower than companies such as Shell, Equinor and Petrobras. The result of this accelerated development has made it possible to incorporate 399 thousand barrels of oil production per day to national production and to incorporate 1,173 million cubic feet per day of gas, with the development of new fields.
This material from the GlobalEnergy portal has been edited for clarity, style and length.
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