Peak... Oil, That Is... PEMEX Cantrell - Peak To Pooft... 3 years

[Leigh Meyers <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

The Beverly Hillbillies:
http://www.siglandia.net/Immagini/TF%20USA/beverly%20hillbillies.jpg

Wire services
El Universal
January 31, 2006

For more than a quarter of a century, the cluster of platforms off 
southern MexicoÂs Gulf coast has been the main source of the countryÂs 
vast oil exports, providing about 35 percent of the governmentÂs annual 
revenue.

Cantarell, as the oil field is known, is the worldÂs third biggest and 
responsible for about 60 percent of the 3.4 million barrels Mexico 
produces each day. The oil has been cheap to extract. Whereas many of 
the worldÂs important reserves are thousands of meters below ground in 
geologically challenging and climatically harsh environments, the 
deepest well at Cantarell is barely 60 meters.

"For the past generation we have been living a delicious dream," says a 
spokesperson at the investor relations department of Pemex, the 
state-owned and run oil monopoly. Unfortunately for Mexico, that dream 
could end with a jolt. This year, production at Cantarell will fall - 
Pemex says about 6 percent - for the first time since it reached an 
all-time high of 2 million barrels a day.

After a recent trip to Mexico, Paul Sankey, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, 
said: "Cantarell field provided a microcosm for the problems of global 
oil - peaking supply, subsidized demand growing rampantly, a history of 
state ownership and upcoming elections muddying the outlook for investment."

On the surface, Pemex does not seem overly worried. Last month it 
predicted that CantarellÂs decline would be relatively smooth, with 
estimated production in 2008 of 1.4 million barrels a day compared with 
1.9 million a day this year. At the same time, says the company, other 
fields such as Ju-Maloob-Zaap and the BermÃdez complex "will compensate 
for the decline in production at Cantarell".

But David Shields, an expert on the nationÂs oil industry, says that 
that relatively benign scenario is the most optimistic of PemexÂs 
forecasts, and is certainly not the most likely. Citing a recent Pemex 
study, Shields claims a much more probable outcome is that CantarellÂs 
treasured production "collapses" within the next three years to just 
one-quarter of what it is today. "The accounts that Pemex will hand over 
to the new government at the end of this year are not exactly what you 
would call stellar," he says.
<...>
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/16805.html