Pemex and Petrobras Bet Big on High-Risk High-Reward Drilling Off Mexico
Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex and Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras are joining efforts and expertise to drill prospects in Mexican waters in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to unlock huge oil resources from source rock formations that are miles deeper and eight times older than the currently producing formations in the U.S. Gulf.
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Key Facts
- Fact 1: Back in 2018, Pemex drilled more than 7,800 meters (25,600 feet) below the sea floor and penetrated the Campeche salt layer in an exploratory well that was declared unproductive.
- Fact 2: Pemex hasn’t shared publicly any results of its 2018 drilling campaign offshore Campeche, but analysts say there is a reason why the Mexican oil giant hasn’t abandoned efforts to find huge resources and turn around years of declining domestic oil production from legacy wells.
- Fact 3: waters in the Gulf, where oil firms, including supermajors Chevron, Shell, and BP, for decades have been pumping oil that accounts for about 14% of total U.S.
- Fact 4: Pemex also reported in July a second-quarter net profit down by 70% from a year earlier, despite the oil price rally in the April-June period due to the Middle East crisis.
Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex and Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras are joining efforts and expertise to drill prospects in Mexican waters in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to unlock huge oil resources from source rock formations that are miles deeper and eight times older than the currently producing formations in the U.S. Gulf.
Exploration in the Jurassic formations deep under the Mexican Gulf seabed in the Campeche Bay carries high risks, but the reward in case of a discovery could be enormous, geologists and analysts tell Bloomberg. Back in 2018, Pemex drilled more than 7,800 meters (25,600 feet) below the sea floor and penetrated the Campeche salt layer in an exploratory well that was declared unproductive. The Mexican oil giant hasn’t ventured new exploratory wells in the area since then, but industry experts believe that Pemex may have found something of great geological and/or hydrocarbon-bearing potential, which has prompted it to pursue exploration further.
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Original source: OilPrice.com
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