Delegates at a major oil sector conference in Guadalajara learned this week that state-owned Pemex has discovered huge reserves in the Gulf of Mexico that could yield up to 200,000 barrels a day.
According to Pemex Director Emilio Lozoya, the discovery is the biggest oil find in the past five years and will reverse the recent trend of declining production.
The news came on the first day of the Congreso Mexicano del Petroleo, an international conference that has drawn representatives from 12 nations seeking to take advantage of the recent reforms that open up Mexico’s oil industry to the private sector.
The transformation of the country’s oil sector, and how Jalisco might play a role in this, was a theme highlighted in a welcoming speech by Governor Aristoteles Sandoval. Although acknowledging that Jalisco is not an “oil state” like Tabasco or Campeche, he noted that oil companies are likely to need this state’s IT knowledge in its development of new technologies.
Next month, the Mexican government will launch the first auction of 14 shallow water oil fields since the reforms of 2013. The offer is open to domestic and foreign investors and, for the first time, will test international firms’ appetite for the Mexican oil market.
Talking at the conference Wednesday, Guillermo García Alcocer, chief of exploration and extraction at the Mexican Energy Ministry, estimated that in the long-term the energy reforms will bring in around 12 billion dollars in new investment and create half a million jobs. The Mexican consumer will soon benefit from increased competition at the pumps, he said, as the loosening of government regulations in 2017 will mean Pemex will no longer be the sole provider of gasoline in Mexico.