La Jornada: Pemex, the most important problem in the country

The country has some problems, but perhaps the most important is the low oil production and the situation of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), declared businessman Carlos Slim Helú, when opening his annual press conference with reflections on the country’s growth and the weight that the oil sector came to have.

“What Pemex should do is concentrate on producing oil (…) it is urgent that it do so now,” said the man who leads the largest private equity in Mexico and Latin America, highlighting that the country’s main public company has low production and high costs given its large structure, which has led to debts and non-payments to suppliers.

Grupo Carso, founded by Slim, is the main private partner of Pemex. The businessman pointed out that the public company’s production is not enough, especially because crude oil is above $100 per barrel.

“It would have been impressive if (Pemex) produced, for example, 2 million barrels at 100 dollars,” considered the businessman, after recounting the levels that were recorded in past six-year terms, such as that of Vicente Fox, when Pemex produced an average of 3 million 270 thousand barrels per day, and then questioned where those incomes remained. boom oil.

Slim considered the production goal of one million 800 thousand barrels per day in Pemex, raised by President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, positive, but reiterated that it needs to increase. On Monday it was reported that the oil company produced an average of 1,600,000 barrels per day in April.

The businessman announced that, as part of Grupo Carso’s projects with Pemex, especially in the Ixachi field, crude oil production in the country could increase by an additional million barrels per day of crude oil, in addition to gas, in the next two to three years.

In Ixachi – giant in Nahuatl –, which is the largest field discovered by Pemex in three decades, Grupo Carso has a contract to drill 32 wells, each one would be generating “5 thousand barrels a day,” commented Slim, who assured that 35 wells have been worked so far.

Just as he reiterated the bets on Ixachi to increase oil production in the country, he ruled out entering into other types of hydrocarbon businesses, such as fracking –hydraulic fracturing–, a technique questioned by environmental associations due to the risk of contamination and that the current administration is evaluating. “We are already very saturated,” Slim concluded.

The magnate ruled out his companies participating in Lakach, a gas field in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which is 900 meters deep and 65 kilometers from land.

Although public investments worth one billion pesos have been made to analyze its viability, the project is “irrational,” summarized the businessman.