Mexican crude oil supplies to U.S. to be cut back by 184,000 bpd
The commercial division of Mexico's national oil company, Pemex PMI Comercio Internacional, has some bad news for U.S. oil consumers. Mexico will be sending America less oil this year - to the tune of 184,000 barrels per day. The cuts will continue for at least the next two years because production of crude in Mexico has been falling. Mexico, which provided the U.S. with 1.41 million barrels per day in 2007, has been the number three supplier of oil to the U.S. behind Canada and Saudi Arabia. So far through the first four months of 2008, Mexico has only been averaging 1.17 million barrels per day. Unless some other supplier can or does step up and fill the gap, oil supplies in the U.S. will definitely be tightening in the next few years, meaning that prices at the pump will likely climb further. [Source: El Universal]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ancon44 12:27PM (5/05/2008)
This has been coming for a long time. A president without his head planted in his _ss would have made alternative fuels ready to head off these kinds of problems. It's almost as if Bush will profit somehow, from oil prices going higher.
Oh wait, he will. That's nice to know he'll be taken care of after he loses his job in November.
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why not the LS2LS7? 12:36PM (5/05/2008)
Invade 'em.
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rar 12:40PM (5/05/2008)
why not the LS2LS7?, it worked in Iraq, right?
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BlackbirdHighway 12:50PM (5/05/2008)
Won't do any good to invade, the fuel used up by all the tanks, HUMVEEs, and military aircraft would be more than the extra oil we could get.
Mexico has peaked.
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KarenRei 1:45PM (5/05/2008)
Mexico could produce plenty more oil... but rather than reinvest, they simply pocketted the oil income.
Cantarell was never their largest field. Their largest field is Chicontepec. However, Chicontepec requires horizontal drilling, a lot of wells, reservoir improvement techniques, and so on; it's an expensive field to develop. Cantarell was easy; they found it when a fisherman complained about oil ruining his nets, and each well gladly gave 10-20k barrels per day. What'd they do? They just sat on Cantarell as though it was going to last forever.
Morons.
They also could have looked for deepwater oil (they stumbled into one, Noxal, except it turned out to be mostly natural gas instead). They don't have a very good deepwater exploration program, and their ability to develop deepwater fields is even more lacking. And their laws made it near impossible for them to do joint ventures with international oil companies so they could learn for themselves.
Let's see if they can get themselves out of this hole they've dug themselves into. If they can, it'll probably be at least a decade.
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Rick 1:51PM (5/05/2008)
Uh oh. This year isn't shaping up to be a fun one.
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Tim 3:24PM (5/05/2008)
No need to invade them when they are invading US!
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Dad 4:09PM (5/05/2008)
"1. This has been coming for a long time. A president without his head planted in his _ss would have made alternative fuels ready to head off these kinds of problems"
Yes, Bill Clinton did NOTHING about energy reduction in the USA. He did just the opposite. He allowed SUVs to grow with abandon and failed miserably to restrain consumption. So it will take another 8 years to get this right because Bill Clinton DID NOTHING for his 8 years except encourage consumption. Too bad, another 8 years wasted by Pres Clinton. Of course, his "head" was not up his ars, it was too busy in other affairs of state.
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Dad 4:09PM (5/05/2008)
"1. This has been coming for a long time. A president without his head planted in his _ss would have made alternative fuels ready to head off these kinds of problems"
Yes, Bill Clinton did NOTHING about energy reduction in the USA. He did just the opposite. He allowed SUVs to grow with abandon and failed miserably to restrain consumption. So it will take another 8 years to get this right because Bill Clinton DID NOTHING for his 8 years except encourage consumption. Too bad, another 8 years wasted by Pres Clinton. Of course, his "head" was not up his ars, it was too busy with other "affairs" of state. I know this may be too much for some of you to "swallow", but it is true.
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Dad 4:10PM (5/05/2008)
"Unless some other supplier can or does step up and fill the gap, oil supplies in the U.S. will definitely be tightening in the next few years, meaning that prices at the pump will likely climb further. "
And since oil is a zero sum game, the cost of fuel will rise everywhere, not just the USA.
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gsolman6 4:26PM (5/05/2008)
This is significant but wasn't it Brazil who recently announced the biggest find in decades just recently?
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KarenRei 6:25PM (5/05/2008)
Everyone's been touting it as the biggest in decades, but to me, it seems that they're forgetting about Ferdows-Mounds-Zagheh. :P And there have been plenty of smaller supergiants found in the past decade. And even if there hadn't, there's always virtually limitless, dirty-as-heck syncrude.
The twin problems are production price and how much risk the oil companies are willing to take on (if you spend a fortune to develop an expensive deepwater field, then prices fall, you're in big trouble). This is amplified by a weak dollar and commodities speculation.
Mexico's problem is that they treated Cantarell as an eternal bounty and didn't bother to reinvest the money they made into Chicontepec or deepwater oil. It's like cooking your seed corn.
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American 7:50PM (5/05/2008)
The solution would be ANWAR and tell the eco freaks who are wrong to give up their cars tohelp but they will not the hypocrites
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wayne 9:02AM (5/06/2008)
YES lets drill in ANWAR! I cannot wait to use up all of their 3 months supply of oil. By God, thats the real solution to declining production.
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revoltin' 10:02AM (5/06/2008)
Maybe if we threaten to build a fence and also return every illegal Mexican immigrant currently living in America, the Mexican government will find a way to maintain their oil production. A little motivation goes a long way. Not too damn likely, but it would be fun to stir the pot with our neighbors to the south.
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Bill 10:23AM (5/06/2008)
Failing to reinvest back into more production is not just a Mexican issue - as more and more oil is controlled solely by national governments, the temptation to milk the oil sector increases.
Venezuela has also seen a marked drop in its production, again, because the current government has chosen to loot the oil sector, even forgoing needed maintenance/repairs (forget new exploration/development)
It's also increaingly popular to turn to third world companies as a form of protest, but Chinese or Iranian firms are far behind Western firms such as Exxon-Mobil, BP, or Total in the ability to efficiently develop fields, especially the newer, harder to reach oil discoveries.
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kydon 3:56PM (5/07/2008)
We don't need oil from these other countries, we have plenty here if they (USA) would start drilling but the envirmentalist are against that. It's up to private enterprise to come up with alternatives. Don't blame the Presidents just because you don't like them. Congress are the ones responsable and neither party has done anything to make things better.
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ss 8:31AM (5/08/2008)
Are we sure they're not just sending it to China or North Korea?
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