Page 11 - LatAmOil Week 35

LatAmOil MEXICO LatAmOil

Pemex begins negotiating unitisation

agreement for another offshore site

MEXICO’S Energy Ministry (SENER) has determine whether the two sites actually share
revealed that Pemex, the national oil company a reservoir.
(NOC), is in negotiations with Hokchi Energy This is not the first time that Pemex has
on joint development of an offshore oil reservoir proposed merging its own fields with adjacent
in the Gulf of Mexico. sites. The state-owned company is pushing for
Ministry officials told Reuters earlier this the unitisation of Zama, a large field that may
week that Pemex had commenced the first stage hold nearly 700mn barrels of oil in recovera-
of talks with Hokchi on the unitisation of two ble reserves, with one of its own assets. In June,
adjacent sites in the southern Gulf of Mexico. SENER ordered Pemex and Talos Energy (US),
Hokchi – a Mexican subsidiary of Pan Ameri- the head of the consortium set up to explore and
can Energy (Argentina), itself partly owned by develop Zama, to draw up an agreement on joint
BP – already holds the licence for one of these development.
fields, while the NOC controls the other. Hokchi is developing two sites in the south-
The officials did not name either field, but ern Gulf. Its Hokchi field lies off the coast of
they did state that Pemex had come out in Tabasco State, while Block 2/31 is offshore Ver-
favour of unitising the two fields in May, after it acruz. The company has a 75% stake in Block
drilled an exploration well at its own field. They 2/31, while Talos owns the remaining 25%. ™
explained that the results of the drilling project
indicated that Pemex’s site may share a reservoir
with Hokchi’s field, which lies in a shallow-water
section of the Gulf.
In light of this possibility, the officials said,
the two companies have begun discussing the
possibility of unitisation under a confidential-
ity agreement that allows them to share tech-
nical data with each other. They did not say
when Hokchi and Pemex were likely to finish
negotiations.
Nor did they say when Mexico’s national
oil and gas industry regulator, the National
Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), might
begin assessing the licence areas in question.
The agency must conduct a technical analysis to The proposed unitisation would affect fields in the Gulf (Image: Premier Oil)

CNH gives Shell, Grupo Carso green

light for exploration drilling projects

MEXICO’S National Hydrocarbons Com- exploration well at Block 12, an onshore licence
mission, known by its Spanish acronym CNH, area in Veracruz State.
gave two companies the green light to move The company is due to spud the new well,
forward with exploration drilling projects last known as Ochpán-1EXP, on November 18.
week. The state agency approved both drilling It will then wrap up drilling sometime in
programmes during its 11th ordinary meeting, December.
which was conducted online. Operadora Bloque 12 is set to spend $3.27mn
According to the Mexican press, one of on the drilling of Ochpán-1EXP. The firm hopes
CNH’s decisions authorises Operadora Blo- to find crude oil with a specific gravity of about
que 12 – a subsidiary of Grupo Carso, a Mexi- 32 degrees API in the well, and it believes Block
can conglomerate controlled by the prominent 12 may hold as much as 26.7mn barrels of oil
businessman Carlos Slim – to drill its second equivalent (boe) in total.

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