Page 10 - LatAmOil Week 08 2020
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Contractual obligations
In related news, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said that his govern- ment is working to determine whether Pemex must uphold a contract with a consortium formed by a local company, Grupo Idesa, and Braskem of Brazil.
Speaking to reporters during his daily press conference in Mexico City, Lopez Obrador said that state officials were reviewing Pemex’s
contract for deliveries of ethane to Braskem Idesa SAPI’s Nanchital petrochemical plant in Veracruz. “We’re investigating if the contract can be cancelled, if it can be done legally ... There is an ongoing investigation,” he reported.
The contract calls for Pemex to supply the Nanchital facility with ethane at below-market prices. Braskem Idesa SAPI recently began buy- ing US-produced ethane for use as feedstock at the plant.
Nanchital petrochemical plant (Photo: Braskem Idesa.SAPI)
Shell keen to proceed with drilling work at deepwater Mexican blocks
THE Mexican subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell (UK/Netherlands) intends to move forward with its deepwater drilling campaign in the Gulf of Mexico, even though it does not expect to bring any new fields on stream during the cur- rent presidential term.
According to Alberto de la Fuente, the man- aging director of Shell Mexico, the programme calls for the drilling of 10 to 13 new wells at a cost of $800mn to $2.4bn. Shell will spud four of these wells in 2020, with another four following in 2021, he told Bloomberg in an interview.
De la Fuente indicated that he was optimistic about the company’s chances of finding com- mercial hydrocarbon reserves at its deepwater blocks. He stressed, though, that Shell was not likely to begin commercial production at any of the fields targeted in the campaign before Mex- ico’s current president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (widely known as AMLO), leaves office.
“First oil, if we are successful, is unlikely to occur before the end of AMLO’s term, due to the complexity of deepwater fields, which can take
anywhere from five years to a decade to start producing,” he told Bloomberg.
He was referring to the fact that the current administration was due to remain in place until late 2024.
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Shell won rights to nine blocks offshore Mexico in 2014 (Image: CNH)
