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Mexico Delays Deepest Planned Offshore Oil Well
 Timothy Gardner - Reuters
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August 06, 2010
Washington - Mexico's state oil company Pemex will delay its deepest-ever offshore well until next year due to concerns about deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP Plc oil spill, a top regulator said Thursday.
"We are more concerned about best practices in deepwater," Juan Carlos Zepeda, the head of Mexico's recently formed National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH: 31.77 ,0.00 ,0.00%), told reporters at an energy conference.
Zepeda said Pemex would drill its Maximino well sometime next year, but would not estimate when. It had been expected to start during the fourth quarter of this year.
A Pemex official confirmed the delay of drilling the well, to be the deepest ever attempted by the company, citing a decision to try a less-challenging prospect first.
Pemex hopes its deepwater resources will someday reverse Mexico's declining oil production. The deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which have emerged as a major oil production source for the United States, are largely unexplored in Mexican territory.
Mexico believes billions of barrels of oil lie in the deep waters of the Gulf, but exploration efforts are only beginning. Pemex has drilled fewer than 20 deepwater wells so far. It has made some modest natural gas and oil discoveries but has not yet turned up any major deepwater finds.
Company officials say they have no plans to slow future exploration despite safety concerns raised by the BP disaster.
NEW RIG
The hydrocarbons commission, set up under reforms to energy legislation enacted in 2008, has gradually been asserting its position as an independent regulatory body. Its power is limited to making recommendations to the energy ministry.
Zepeda said the commission was considering recommending enhanced safety rules for deepwater rigs similar to those the United States has been considering in the wake of the spill.
He said CNH was considering requiring a "double key" standard in which more than one person within Pemex would make final decisions on drilling procedures such as declaring that cementing on a well has been completed.
That would be a "core for an important transformation" in deepwater drilling, Zepeda said.
Mexico has been waiting for the delivery of a new drilling rig capable of operating in ultra-deep waters to test prospects like Maximino near the U.S. border. The rig is due to arrive in the fourth quarter of this year.
The rig, completed earlier this year in South Korea, is owned by local Mexican company Grupo R.
However instead of starting with Maximino, Pemex has decided to drill its Tulipau-1 prospect first to get familiar with the equipment, the Pemex official explained.
In the United States, the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers and hurt the billion-dollar fishing and tourism industries across five states along the Gulf of Mexico.
The 9,600 foot (2,900 meter) Maximino well lies about 18.5 miles (30 km) from the U.S. border at sea.
Zepeda said the delay would "give us the correct timing for finishing working with Pemex on their review of internal regulation and, in case it's necessary on top of that, specific regulation for exploration and production."
(Additional reporting by Robert Campbell in Mexico City; Editing by David Gregorio)
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