Cantarell Average Output Down 44,000 B/D In July Over June - On Track For 15% Decline In 2007

[hatrack]

MEXICO CITY: Crude oil output dropped in July at Mexico's aging Cantarell offshore field, according to data published on the energy ministry's Web site on Monday. Cantarell, closely watched by the oil industry after sharp dips in output in recent months, produced an average of 1.526 million barrels per day versus 1.570 million bpd in June.

The figure meant Cantarell accounted for just 48.2 per cent of Mexico's overall crude oil output last month, continuing a steady decline over the past year at the field, which once produced around 60 per cent of the country's oil.

Analysts worry that state oil monopoly Pemex will struggle to ramp up yields at younger oil fields like Ku Maloob Zaap and Chicontepec fast enough to make up for Cantarell's decline.

Pemex is drilling horizontal wells that twist around to reach into narrow oil seams as Cantarell grows drier. It forecasts the field will produce an average of 1.526 million bpd over 2007, down 15 per cent from the 2006 level.

EDIT

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Global_Markets/July_oil_output_drops_at_Mexicos_Cantarell_field/articleshow/2316174.cms

[Systematic Chaos]

1. K&R for the DUer in another thread for whom this was not known...

Here would be what I was talking about when I said that 40% of our imported oil was about to go out the window. :(

[Javaman]

2. What will be fun is when Mexico becomes an oil importer!!!

Things are going to be very interesting in about 3 years.

The Mexican government has already raised taxes to make up for the short fall in profits from the oil fields.

[hunter]

3. Time for Mexico to make friends with Hugo Chavez, real quick...

Uncle Sam will be left standing alone in the cold wondering what the hell just happened as some blithering tool on Fox News implies it's all the fault of brown people who can't bother themselves to speak English.

I see intolerably smug Canadians in this forecast too... Even Canadians who don't speak French will start saying things in French and making jacket buttons out of our coins just to tweak us.

[GliderGuider]

4. I wonder how the American administration would take that.

It's actually a part of my "Cantarell scenario":

Cantarell's crash and PEMEX's impending bankruptcy present a political crisis of the first magnitude for Mexico's elite and threaten the stability of the small middle class. This crisis presents a great opportunity for the long downtrodden majority to gain power as has happened in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Conditions will be ripe for a resurgence of revolutionary sentiment in Mexico, which will probably take the form of an import of the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chavez.

Of course, having such an incendiary political movement on their very doorstep will not sit well with the American industrial/political establishment. The probability of direct American political, economic and even military involvement in Mexican affairs as a result should not be lightly dismissed.

[hunter]

5. The U.S. is just the big cheese of corrupt American right wing oligarchies.

It always has been.

Most of our citizens have never experienced a "first world" democratic, socialist lifestyle. It's all about the facades of success here, and if you are not successful by some very narrow definitions that are not threatening to the oligarchy then you are supposed to suffer quietly and not make any political trouble. Shut up and accept these food stamps.

Organized dissent that threatens the oligarchy will always be disrupted. We can't even have simple things like universal healthcare in the United States because such an obvious social benefit would reduce the power this oligarchy has over us.

We are supposed to live in fear -- fear of losing our jobs, our homes, our health, and ultimately our lives. There are many Americans who won't even take vacations because they are afraid it will set them back somehow.

The U.S. oligarchy has a very real fear of successful Latin American social movements upsetting the power structure here. But I don't think that's the way it's going to go down... We will only get a decent sort of government here after the wheels fall off of this economy, and that's inevitable not as a political action, but as a simple matter of entropy. The foundation of this oligarchy is cheap oil and natural gas. The end of it will be marked by a price on a gasoline pump.

[GliderGuider]

6. You reminded me of Moore's contrast of France and the USA in Sicko

He said that in the USA the people are afraid of the government while in France the government is afraid of the people, and that defines much of the difference between the two nations. I'm not sure how it ended up that way, fear of government is definitely not your cultural myth.