Mexico plans to open oil industry to foreigners
Mexico aims to develop its energy future in its changing landscape of oil and gas industry looking for foreign interest.
Private investors will have the opportunity to bid on a significant percentage of the prospective reserves, though under the overhaul, most of the country’s production will remain with Pemex, the state-owned oil monopoly.
The announcement will attract foreign investment to Mexico’s oil business opening after foreign companies were banned for private investment following a nationalized oil industry back in 1938.
Officials said Pemex would maintain 83 percent of Mexico’s proven and probable reserves — an estimated 20.6 billion barrels of crude oil equivalent.
Pemex’s chief executive, Emilio Lozoya Austin, said the company would begin looking for joint ventures to help it develop some of these fields, including those in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Energy officials hope the entry of new companies will bring capital and expertise to bear on difficult deposits and raise national production to three million barrels a day by 2018.
International companies like Chevron and Shell have been successful in pumping oil from deep beneath the ocean floor in the United States portion of the gulf and will probably be interesting in investing in Mexico’s oil industry.
Source: NYT
