Page 6 - LatAmOil Week 11 2021

LatAmOil MEXICO LatAmOil

Pemex reports major new

find offshore Tabasco state

MEXICO’S national oil company (NOC) Pemex government’s expropriation of oil assets held by
has reported the discovery of a large new field off foreign companies in 1938, to make more details
the coast of Tabasco State in the southern Gulf. of the find public, he told Villamil.
Octavio Romero, the CEO of Pemex, However, the Pemex chief did comment
described the field as “gigantic” in an interview on the Mexican government’s decision to keep
with Jenaro Villamil, the president of govern- the NOC’s fields in production throughout the
ment-run broadcaster Sistema Público de Radi- whole of 2020, despite calls for slowing upstream
odifusión del Estado Mexicano (SPR). “It is a development operations in response to the coro-
large field surrounded by smaller ones that could navirus (COVID-19) pandemic. He defended
together hold prospective resources” of as much this move, saying it had allowed the company to
as 1bn barrels of crude, he said. He also com- continue operating at a steady pace.
pared it favourably to other major finds such as “The decision not to stop was very impor-
Ixachi, an onshore natural gas and condensate tant because we didn’t lose the momentum,” he
field that contains 1.9bn barrels of oil equivalent declared.
(boe), and Quesqui, another onshore gas and Pemex has come under fire in some quarters
condensate field that comprises 900mn boe. for having continued to send work teams out to
A discovery of this size has the potential to job sites last year, even as the pandemic slowed
help the company shore up production rates, domestic and global energy demand and the
which have been in decline for more than a dec- company fell behind on payments to suppliers
ade, the Bloomberg news agency commented. and oilfield service providers (OSPs). Its pol-
By contrast, S&P Global Platts expressed some icy on this front appears to have contributed to
scepticism about the long-term impact of the higher infection rates among Pemex employees
find. It quoted Gonzalo Monroy, the CEO of and contractors. ™
Mexico’s GMEC consultancy, as saying that high
production costs for gas were not likely to help
the NOC address its sagging output and high
debt load, which amounts to more than $110bn.
Similarly, Marco Cota, CEO of the Mexican
consultancy Talanza Energy, told Platts that the
announcement might be mostly symbolic, as it
was not yet clear whether the new field was com-
mercially viable. “At the end of the day, Mexico
has no shortage of reserves. It is the environment
for investments in the country that is deteriorat-
ing,” he remarked.
Romero did not identify the new field by
name, though other sources have said it is
Dzimpona. Pemex intends to wait until March
18, the date of a national holiday celebrating the Pemex CEO Octavio Romero announced the find last week (Photo: Pemex)

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
NiQuan subsidiary launches new GTL plant

US-BASED NiQuan Energy revealed last week the west coast of the island of Trinidad. NETL
that it had launched its new gas-to-liquids finished building the small-scale facility last
(GTL) plant in Trinidad and Tobago. autumn and commissioned it in December..
In a statement, the company said that its sub- The new GTL plant has a design capacity
sidiary NiQuan Energy Trinidad Ltd (NETL) of 2,400 barrels per day (bpd). Diesel fuel will
had launched the plant, which is in Point-a- account for 80% of its output and naphtha for
Pierre, about 50 km south of Port of Spain on the remaining 20%.

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 11 18•March•2021