As a representative of the Nation, the National Hydrocarbon Commission has signed with Pemex Exploracion and Produccion, the State’s Production Company, the Contract for Crude Oil Drilling under the shared shallow water production scheme, for the Ek and Balam contractual area located in Campeche Sound.
Juan Carlos Zepeda Molina, Commissioner-President and Juan Javier Hinojosa, as Chief Executive Officer and legal representative of Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, have signed this contract.
During the signing ceremony, Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya, Chief Executive Officer of Petroleos Mexicanos, stated that this project is in line with Pemex’s strategy as contemplated for its Business Plan for 2017-2021 to accelerate the development of fields, making it possible to reach the maximum recovery factor and have a significant impact on production. He said that this will contribute to compliance with the objective of achieving profitability.
For his part, Juan Carlos Zepeda, Commissioner-President of CNH mentioned that this Contract will have a term of twenty-two years, with two possible extensions of five years each.
Under the terms of the Contract, Pemex has submitted to the CNH a co-operative guarantee equivalent to five billion dollars.
Pursuant to Clause 15.2 of the Contract, as part of its remuneration, the State will receive 70.5% of the operating profit.
The estimated estimate in this Contract is more than five billion dollars for the next few years.
The Ek and Balam fields are located 85 kilometers from Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche. Considering Pemex’s wide knowledge and experience with shallow-water operations, it chose to upgrade these no-partner areas to the new contractual model. Thus, these fields will be Petr?leos Mexicanos’ first project under this scheme, which will help it increase the value of its own oil fields, while at the same time increasing the income earned by the Mexican nation. This upgrade offers Pemex greater flexibility. Accordingly, if it is later interested in looking for a future partner, we can achieve this through a call for bids representing the terms most favorable for the Nation and observing the best practices as far as transparency is concerned.
Ek and Balam have concentrated approximately 500 million barrels of crude oil in 2P (proven and probable) crude oil reserves. It is estimated that production will reach more than ninety-thousand barrels of crude oil daily in the next five years.
