Oil in Mexico, Making Headway on Provision of Resources
MEXICO CITY (AP) – Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said Monday it received a semi-submersible platform to move into the drilling of wells in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.
The platform “Bicentennial”, contracted by Pemex for a period of five years, will operate in a water depth of 940 meters in an area south of the Gulf of Mexico, the company said in a statement.
The platform, which comes from South Korea, is 110 meters long and 78 wide, with 138 meters and a capacity to house 160 people.
Pemex said that this contract will be carried out “activities in deep water, in water depths up to 3.000 meters deep, with a view to identifying new sources.”
After oil production peaked at 3.4 million bpd in 2004, Mexico began to see a steady decline until 2010, when records began to stabilize.
Throughout 2010 the production amounted to 2.57 million bpd, down 1% on the previous year, but Pemex has indicated that that figure represents a stabilization.
The Government remains one of their strategies to produce oil, go to the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, where authorities have estimated that there would be about 30.000 million barrels, equivalent to 50% of prospective resources.
The agency has said that deepwater exploration is one that takes place in water depths greater than 500 meters, ie the distance between the surface and the seabed.
