pemex

As Mexico’s energy deregulation continues to ramp-up, state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is being asked by the Mexican government to produce more crude in 2018 while reducing its spending.

The natural gas-heavy Burgos Basin in northern Mexico accounted for 15% of the country’s total gas production in 2016, and foreign investment in the play could put it on par with the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Production of crude and natural gas by Mexico’s state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) slipped in the second quarter, but at a slower rate, the company said Thursday.

Mexico’s state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) has secured US$5 billion to cover its financing needs for 2017 and 2018, consolidating its liquidity position.

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.

Total natural gas production in Mexico fell at a trendline rate of 3.7% a year between 2012 and the first half of 2017, according to NGI calculations, but that figure obscures the actual driving force behind the overall decline.

Natural gas prices have been freed throughout Mexico, the nation’s energy regulator Comision Reguladora de Energia (CRE) declared in a decree published Friday in the Diario Oficial, the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Register.

Twenty-four companies representing a wide range of industries and national origin gained access Monday to Mexico’s natural gas pipelines that had been under the control of state-run oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) for almost eight decades.

Revving up. On March 2, the Energy Secretariat (SENER) published its revamped strategy to drive the country’s oil and gas bidding rounds. The principal changes are to establish standard block sizes, to open all blocks simultaneously for nomination by private parties, and to hold two bidding rounds per year. The three-step nomination scale — high, middle, low — will help SENER gauge private-sector interest across the country’s reserves and to rank the latter both domestically and internationally. While nominations are open to anyone as of the announcement, there will be a three-month period prior to the launch of a bidding round for SENER to evaluate which blocks to include. It looks as if SENER is in a hurry to maximize the country’s oil rent. (Source: SENER)