President Felipe Calderón of Mexico announced Wednesday that the national oil company, Pemex, had struck oil in deep water, its first success after years of exploration in the deeper reaches along the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
The find, deep below the gulf’s floor and more than 8,200 feet below the surface of the water, could add as much as 400 million barrels in potential reserves to Mexico’s overall reserves, Mr. Calderón said at a ceremony at Los Pinos, his official residence.
But perhaps even more important than the amount is the fact that Pemex, a monopoly, found the oil on its own.
Mexican law prevents Pemex, which is officially called Petróleos Mexicanos, from forming partnerships with outside companies. Critics have argued that the company lacked the experience to successfully explore in deep waters.
For Mr. Calderón, the announcement was vindication in the final months of his presidency that the deepwater strategy was worth the gamble. Holding up a vial of light crude from the well, he said: “What a good thing that this effort is crowned today, with a great discovery, with the realization of a goal that we had set for ourselves.”
The find may complicate oil policy for Mr. Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, who takes office Dec. 1, said Carlos Ramírez, a Mexico analyst at the Eurasia Group in Washington.
Mr. Peña Nieto has said that he will propose new laws to allow private companies to invest with Pemex. Opposition from nationalists had shot down a similar change proposed by Mr. Calderón in 2008.
Now that Pemex has shown it can strike oil in deep waters, “it will give ammunition to opponents of reform,” Mr. Ramírez said.
Pemex has spent almost $4 billion on deepwater exploration over the last decade without much success until now. Mexico’s regulator, the National Hydrocarbons Commission, recently argued that Pemex was dedicating too much money to exploring low-profit and risky projects in deep waters and shortchanging exploration elsewhere.
In his announcement, Mr. Calderón suggested that the new find could be part of a much larger oilfield with the potential to produce from 4 to 10 billion barrels of crude oil.
Mexico is the third largest supplier of imported crude oil to the United States, but its production began slipping from its peak in 2004 as its giant Canterell oil field went into decline. It has stabilized production over the last couple of years at about 2.55 billion barrels a day.
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