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| Antiprivate: Followers of leftist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador protested Sunday against private investment in Pemex. Alexandre Meneghini/AP |
Mexico's oil output falls, Pemex needs cash infusion
Should the national oil company allowing private investments? Critics worry about foreign control.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 26, 2008 edition
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Coatzacoalcos, Mexico - Oil output in Mexico, the third-biggest supplier to the US, is declining, and the state company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) lacks the technology to explore for new reserves. For many the answer seems simple: more capital.
But now that senators have begun debating ways to attain that capital – a top priority of President Felipe Calderón – resistance has mounted, particularly to the idea to allowing in private enterprise.
In no place is there more opposition than along the industrial corridor in this resource-rich, steamy stretch of Veracruz State. "This oil is from here, and it belongs to us," says Francisco Lopez Martinez, who inspected oil barges at Pemex for 36 years before retiring this year.
The attitudes of residents in the neighborhood Oct. 24 in Coatzacoalcos, where lines of homes are almost entirely occupied by the engineers, mechanics, and computer repair personnel employed by Pemex's plentiful plants here, underscore President Calderón's biggest conundrum: Pemex is flagging, but the country is unlikely to do anything significant about it.
It matters to the US because Mexico is a top supplier at a time when global demand is high. It matters to Mexico because Pemex funds 40 percent of the country's national budget. But as the 70th anniversary of nationalization of the industry nears (March 18), political infighting could lead to an impasse.
There are several ways to prepare Pemex to drill for the reserves of oil believed to lie deep in the Gulf of Mexico, say analysts across the political spectrum. Forming private strategic alliances is just one.
But talk of energy reform causes an almost knee-jerk reaction here, and the word "private" takes center stage, electrifying a population whose perception is that Mexico loses if foreigners are let in. On Sunday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – Calderón's leftist opponent who lost the 2006 presidential election by a whisker and dubs himself the "legitimate" president of Mexico – led thousands in protest to proposals to open Pemex to private investment.
"We are facing a big challenge in front of us. Mexico has been a big oil producer for the last 30 years, but the lifetime of the reservoir [Cantarell] is coming to an end," says Ruben Camarillo, a member of Calderón's center-right National Action Party (PAN) and secretary of the energy commission debating the reform in the senate. "At this point in time, PEMEX does not have the [needed] technology."
Mexico's crude production has fallen since 2004, a record year with 3.38 million barrels per day (b.p.d), according to the US Department of Energy. Production fell to 3.25 million in 2006, and the DOE predicts that it will decline by another 130,000 b.p.d in 2008 and 110,000 b.p.d in 2009. The decline parallels dramatically depleting reserves at Cantarell, which for 30 years was Mexico's biggest source of oil. At the same time, the number of Mexico's proven reserves fell from 49.3 billion barrels in 1986 to 12.4 billion last year.
Last year Mexico's Energy Secretary, Georgina Kessel, said that crude production could fall by a third in less than 10 years if reform is not implemented.
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