Pemex sees oil output boost from looming joint ventures

Mexican state oil company Pemex expects to boost crude output over the next few years with a handful of joint ventures that will focus on onshore and offshore fields, a company official said, outlining areas it will seek to develop with outside producers.

New production from the future joint ventures, or farm outs, is forecast to add about 400,000 barrels in new daily crude output and bring the company's total to about 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2022, according to a presentation to investors published earlier this year.

Pemex's press office said this week the forecast still stands.

The forecast is banking on new oil output coming from mature onshore fields Rodador, Ogarrio and Cardenas Mora; mature offshore fields Bolontiku, Sinan and Ek; heavy oil offshore fields Ayatsil, Tekel and Utsil; as well as deep water natural gas fields Kunah and Piklis, a Pemex official said on Wednesday, asking not to be named because of company policy.

The official added the forecast also assumes new production from joint ventures that will focus on developing two Gulf of Mexico deep water areas in the Perdido Fold Belt - Trion and Exploratus - which straddle the country's maritime border with the United States.

Pemex has previously said the joint ventures will require investment of about $32 billion.

In 2013, President Enrique Pena Nieto's newly-appointed Pemex chief executive Emilio Lozoya pledged to boost output to 3 million bpd by 2018 following the approval of a sweeping energy reform that ended the company's decades-long monopoly and paved the way for new private producers to begin operating.

But the Pemex forecast puts 2018 production at about 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) while simultaneously assuming new daily production from as yet unsigned joint ventures that are expected to begin coming online by then.

Oil prices have fallen by more than half over the past couple years, forcing steep budget cuts across the industry.

Pemex's output peaked at 3.38 million bpd in 2004 and currently stands at 2.21 million bpd, according to company data.

Among the projects where Pemex expects new output, only the Trion joint venture has been approved by its board.

In an interview with Reuters last month, new Pemex CEO Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya said the company's estimated 2016 production of 2.13 million bpd will likely slide further in 2017 before stabilizing the following year.