Mexico’s Pemex fears ‘crippled’ oil reform

MEXICO CITY, April 3 (Reuters) – A planned oil reform in Mexico will be “crippled” if opposition lawmakers water it down to exclude opening up deep sea oil to foreign partners, a top executive at state-run oil monopoly Pemex said on Thursday.

Exploration and Production chief Carlos Morales said Pemex’s first deepwater exploration wells had not found oil, and if foreign joint ventures are kept out of a new oil law, it could be 20 years before it produces a drop of crude from deep waters.


“They might give us more financial resources and more legal capacity, but if they don’t give us the ability everybody else has to form partnerships, it will leave the process crippled,” Morales told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit.

President Felipe Calderon hoped to pass an energy law by the end of April that would allow Pemex to pair up with experienced oil majors to speed up its entry to deepwater oil and shore up declining output and reserves.

But he has hit stiff opposition in Congress, where leftists and many centrists oppose lowering barriers to private capital.

Reuters