Deepwater

Mexico plans to offer 30 blocks for deepwater exploration in the fourth auction of the Round 2 series in what one analyst said was “an all-out effort” by the nation’s energy authorities to follow up on recent upstream auction successes as part of the 2013 energy reform.

Final investment decisions (FID) within the global upstream sector are on pace to double from 2016, marking a positive turning point for the long-depressed oil and natural gas markets.

When Brazil’s energy industry was reformed more than a decade ago, state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, aka Petrobras, raised $70 billion through an initial public offering (IPO) amid a buying frenzy in the Sao Paulo stock exchange. Mexico’s state-owned Petroleos Mexicano (Pemex) had no such luck in the country’s oil and gas reform, but the company has no plans to go it alone.

Oil and natural gas exploration companies plan to keep the focus on low-cost opportunities this year, with an emphasis on creating value, capital efficiency and returns on investments, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

BP plc and Reliance Industries Ltd. on Thursday said they plan to bring 1 Bcf/d of natural gas capacity onstream between 2020 and 2022 from three deepwater gas fields offshore India that hold an estimated 3 Tcf of discoverable resource.

The Permian Basin’s Delaware play gave a solid assist to Anadarko Petroleum Corp. volumes in the first quarter, but new regulatory scrutiny in its other big onshore play, the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Colorado, weighed on investor sentiment Wednesday.

A leaner and more cost competitive industry in the deepwater has emerged as the energy industry gets back to work, with the most compelling projects worldwide closer to competing with U.S. tight oil plays, according to Wood Mackenzie.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) recently issued a deepwater port license for what is expected to be the first offshore floating natural gas liquefaction project in the United States.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is hiking its capital spending by more than one-third this year as it works to raise Permian Basin resources by 50% and Denver-Julesburg (DJ) resources by 33%.