Border battle brews over Mexico’s undersea oil

Unable to develop its deepwater wells and crowded by foreign energy giants, the nation weighs opening up a key industry.

U.S. GULF OF MEXICO — Eight miles north of the maritime border with Mexico, in waters a mile and a half deep, Shell Oil Co. is constructing the most ambitious offshore oil platform ever attempted in the Gulf of Mexico.

As tall as the Eiffel Tower, the floating production facility will be anchored to the ocean floor by moorings spanning an area the size of downtown Houston. Slated to begin operating late next year, this leviathan known as Perdido (or Lost) will cost billions and be capable of pumping 100,000 barrels of crude a day.


But Perdido’s most-notable achievement may be to compel Mexico to loosen its 70-year government monopoly on the petroleum sector, thanks to a phenomenon Mexicans have dubbed the “drinking straw effect.”

Mexicans fear that companies drilling in U.S. waters close to the border will suck Mexican crude into their wells. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis’ fictional oilman in “There Will Be Blood” likened the concept to siphoning a rival’s milkshake.

“When they take petroleum from the American side, our petroleum is going to migrate,” Sen. Francisco Labastida Ochoa, head of the Mexican Senate’s Energy Committee, told the newspaper Milenio recently.

LA Times