Carlos Morales, who heads Pemex’s production and exploration arm, said Mexico’s biggest Ku Maloob Zaap field will pump around 850,000 barrels of oil per day through 2018, two years longer than originally forecast.
“The latest forecast is that it could continue producing (at current levels) until 2018 ... After that the decline will begin,” Morales said at Pemex offices in Mexico City.
New discoveries in the areas around Ku Maloob Zaap will help maintain output for more time, Morales said.
The country’s second largest field Cantarell will also stabilize at current levels between 530,000 and 540,000 bpd until 2016, he added.
Mexico, a top oil exporter to the US, has struggled to reverse a dramatic drop at the aging Cantarell field, causing worry for the government that relies on oil for 40 percent of its revenues.
Cantarell once generated some 2 million barrels of oil per day but that fell sharply as the field entered a natural phase of decline. Pemex has managed to stabilize output at Cantarell over the past 10 months, Morales said.
“At Cantarell we are going to see a slight increase but for all practical purposes we are going to maintain production at where it is now until 2016,” Morales said.
Sliding Mexican oil output, and limited political will for dealing with the problem, helped lead two credit ratings agencies to downgrade Mexican debt in 2009, saying the country relies too heavily on oil money to prop up government budgets.
Pemex’s net profit nearly tripled in the first quarter compared to a year ago to 4.2 billion pesos ($353 million) on higher oil prices, the company said in a release on Friday.
President Felipe Calderon pushed an oil reform through congress in 2008 to allow more foreign investment in the sector, mostly off limits to private companies since a 1938 nationalization of oil resources.
But the process to award incentive-based contracts has dragged, with the first auctions for three small, mature fields only beginning this summer.
Analysts say Pemex needs outside help to make new discoveries, especially in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and improve output at existing fields if it hopes to meet ambitious production goals.
Mexico produced 2.573 million barrels per day in April and Morales said the country could reach 2.7 million bpd by 2012 and 3 million bpd by 2015, still below a peak reached in 2004.
Pemex also expects more output at the complicated Chicontepec project where it has sunk billions of dollars in an effort to unlock tiny pockets of oil trapped in hard rock.
Morales said Pemex will boost the current 50,000 bpd at the field to 70,000 bpd by the end of the year, reaching 90,000 bpd by 2012, helped by new drilling.
Mexico’s oil regulator, the National Hydrocarbon Commission, has questioned the company’s estimates of its long-term probable and possible reserves and challenged the economic viability of the Chicontepec project.
In a recent report the Commission’s estimates of probable and possible reserves were more than 20 percent below Pemex’s view.
But Morales said a new evaluation puts independent auditors more in-line with Pemex’s forecasts, measuring 16 million barrels of “3P” reserves. These group proved, probable and possible reserves.
Pemex calculates 17 million barrels of 3P reserves at Chicontepec and Morales said the company has not yet reported the new study to the Commission.
While Pemex has failed so far to make significant new oil discoveries, it recently announced a major natural gas find in the deep waters of Mexico’s Gulf.
The field called Piklis will bring natural gas production in the area to 800 million cubic feet per day by 2015. Three deep water gas fields in the Gulf, including Piklis, will peak at around 2016, Morales said.
Mexico’s total natural gas output this year is at 6.8 billion cubic feet per day but the country still has to buy fuel from abroad to meet demand. The new gas finds will only go to the local market and not be converted into liquid form, or LNG, for export, Morales said.
“These (deep water) projects are already commercially viable and we are now working on development plans,” he said. “We think these projects will help reduce imports.”