Tamaulipas

Mexico’s energy authorities have taken a bold initiative by inviting tenders for the nation’s first auction of unconventional resources of massive but thus far unrealized potential and fraught with potential problems.

Mexico’s oil and natural gas fields are so near but yet so far from the United States, where the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling revolution have turned it into a global behemoth. Now Mexico stands poised as an unconventional threat as well.

Mexico aims to auction blocks of unconventional resources “sooner rather than later” to unleash the potential of shale and tight oil and gas in the northern part of the country, officials said last week.

Shell Gas & Power and El Paso Global LNG announced plans to build Mexico’s first LNG import terminal, a 1.3 Bcf/d facility in Altamira, Tamaulipas on Mexico’s northeastern coastline. Initial investment costs are estimated to be up to $300 million, and the regasification terminal is expected to start importation of LNG in the first half of 2004.