Two Stories About Pemex

by cactus

Excerpts From Two Stories About Pemex

Story 1, Bloomberg, this week.

Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, said crude oil output fell 6.5 percent in November from the year-earlier period as production at its Cantarell field declined at a faster-than-expected rate.

Production dropped to 2.711 million barrels a day, from 2.901 million barrels a day a year earlier, the company known as Pemex said today on its Web site. In an e-mail, Pemex cited Cantarell, its largest field, as the reason for the drop.

The Mexico City-based company in October lowered its 2008 output forecast by 3.6 percent to as low as 2.7 million barrels a day after interruptions from hurricanes. It was the third time Pemex reduced its forecast this year, after a faster-than- expected decline at Cantarell, the world’s third-largest field.

Cantarell’s output fell 33 percent, more than twice as fast as government estimates, to 862,060 barrels a day from a year earlier. Declining pressure at Cantarell has made it more expensive and harder to continue pumping oil from the offshore deposit.

Cantarell accounted for 32 percent of Pemex’s total output, half of the 65 percent it once represented at its peak.

Story 2, Christian Science Monitor, February.

Right now more than half of Pemex’s income is funneled back to the government, accounting for 40 percent of its national budget.

We all know prices have been falling too, so chuck that into the mix. Stir, stick in the oven for a while, and what do you have?

(One detail: Cantarell is the third largest oil field in the world, after Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and Burgan in Kuwait.)
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by cactus