Mexico & Nafta
On 30 August, Mexico's state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, announced that it had found a vast new oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. The field could double the country's oil reserves, Pemex said. A week later, the company issued a clarification: it admitted that it had not actually found any oil, only that its seismic surveying had suggested that there was a high probability of a lot of oil lurking in the depths of the Gulf.
The raising of expectations over the phantom find was deliberate. Executives at Pemex know that there is probably a lot of oil in the Mexican part of the Gulf: geologically it is unlikely that the oil fields found in the US part of the Gulf give out when they reach the maritime frontier lines. The Pemex executives also know that the company simply does not have the technology to drill and produce oil from deepwater wells. The executives know that they will have to buy in the technology in some way. What they are doing, by claiming to have found oil, is to soften up the government to relax the onerous rules under which Pemex operates. In particular the company wants to be able to offer attractive deals on production sharing to potential partners in the Gulf.
The politicians, from all parties, are unconvinced by Pemex's pleas to be given more operational freedom. The politicians may well have a point. The surge in international oil prices means that Pemex, which by law has a monopoly over oil and gas production in Mexican territory, is now a highly eligible partner, at least in the politicians' eyes. The Pemex executives simply see the company's weakness in lots of key areas.
Gallingly for Pemex executives, the world leader in deep-sea oil production is Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company. Petrobras had to develop the technology following the government's decision that the country had to find and develop its own oilfields. Petrobras is looking at going into partnership with Cuba's state oil company to look for oil in the Cuban part of the Gulf of Mexico.