Production decline worsens at Mexico’s biggest oil field

Output could be halved in five years, crimping a major source of funding for public services.

MEXICO CITY

Production at Cantarell, the world’s second-largest oil complex, which provides about 60% of Mexico’s crude, averaged 1.78 million barrels a day in 2006. That’s a 13% drop from 2005, said Jesus Reyes Heroles, director of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in a news conference Wednesday.

The decline was more than twice as great as the company’s published predictions, and the slide will almost surely continue in 2007. Reyes said he expected average daily production at Cantarell to fall to 1.5 million barrels a day this year, a 15% decline. He estimated that within five years the aging field would pump about 700,000 barrels daily, less than half of December’s production of 1.439 million barrels a day.

LA Times