With Easy Oil Gone, Pemex Sobers Up

After coasting through the ’80s and ’90s, the Mexican national oil company is playing catch up to develop the ability to operate in deep water.

HOUSTON — Thirty years ago, a fisherman saw an oil slick in the shallow waters off the coast of Mexico. The discovery would lead to one of the largest crude reservoirs in the world and a party keg for an impoverished country.

Production at Cantarell, as it was named after the fisherman, peaked at more than 2 million barrels of oil a day in 2004 and then began to fall sharply. It is expected to bottom out in three or four years, perhaps between 300,000 and 600,000 barrels a day.

Cantarell’s decline has marked the end of an era of easy oil for Petr