Mexico City — US oil company Chevron will invest $120 million in the only block it operates in Mexico, located in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeastern state of Tabasco.
In an interview with Bloomberg Línea, Chevron’s CEO in Mexico Evelyn Vilchez said the investment will be used to drill an exploration well in block 22 in the Salina basin.
The block corresponds to an exploration contract that Chevron won in 2018 as majority operator (37.5%) in a consortium with Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex (27.5%) and Japan’s Inpex (35%), in an area of 2,878 square kilometers, where it expects to find heavy oil.
“We are complying with the work programs we committed to, and have this year and next, year left,” Vilchez said.
Chevron also owns a 40% interest in three offshore blocks in partnership with Shell, having returned a deepwater block during November 2022.
The deadline to conclude the contract’s stipulated minimum work program is May 21, 2023, according to the country’s oil and gas regulatory body, the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH).
Vilchez is also the president of the Mexican Association of Hydrocarbon Companies (Amexhi), and when asked about the private initiative’s production forecasts for the rest of the six-year term, she said that production is not the metric by which to measure the performance of oil companies in Mexico, but by minimum work programs, investment, jobs created, oil reserves and technology transfer.
“There are many other metrics other than production,” she added.
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador canceled planned oil and gas auctions following the 2013 energy reform that threw the sector open to more private investment, and set oil companies a production target of 280,000 barrels per day, but companies are far from the target and have failed to meet their annual production and investment goals.
During 2022, Chevron produced 1.7 million barrels per day of crude oil and condensates, and has a market value of $304.4 billion, according to data from Statista and Bloomberg.