Pemex Says March Crude Output Falls 5% From Year Ago

(Bloomberg) — Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil monopoly, said crude production fell 5 percent in March from a year earlier, the eighth straight monthly decline as the company depletes its largest oilfield, Cantarell.

Daily output was 3.18 million barrels last month, down from 3.35 million in March 2006 and higher than February’s 3.15 million barrels, the Mexico City-based company said today in a report on its Web site.


Cantarell, the world’s third-largest oilfield, posted March production of 1.59 million barrels per day, a 17 percent drop from 1.92 million barrels in March last year, according to statistics today from the Energy Ministry’s Web page.

Pemex, as the company is known, has begun to drill horizontal wells in the Cantarell offshore field to slow the decline. The company decided a decade ago to increase production at Cantarell by pumping nitrogen into wells to increase pressure. Production peaked at the field in 2004 at more than 2 million barrels per day.

Bloomberg