MEXICO CITY Petroleumworld.com, Jan 8, 2010 Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, may produce more crude in 2011 as new discoveries come on line, arresting seven years of plunging output. Pemex, as the Mexico City-based company is known, may produce 2.55 million barrels a day next year, up 50,000 barrels from the forecast for 2010, Carlos Morales, head of exploration and production, said in a presentation on the company’s Web site dated Dec. 1 and released at year-end. Oil production may rise to 2.69 million barrels a day in 2012, Morales said in the presentation. Pemex pumped 2.602 million barrels a day through November 2009. Pemex’s output entered its seventh year of declines this month, as the company aims to find new deposits and bring discoveries online to replace aging fields. Pemex Chief Executive Officer Juan Jose Suarez Coppel has said the company may pump 2.5 million barrels of oil a day in 2010. The company expects to add production from new fields that are part of its Crudo Ligero Marino project as well as fields in the Campeche sound, the location of Cantarell, the world’s third-largest field when it was discovered in the 1970s. Production at the $11.1 million Chicontepec onshore field and additional onshore projects may also climb next year. Cantarell’s Decline Cantarell, which accounted for about two-thirds of the oil Mexico produced at the peak of production in December 2003, fell by 35 percent in November from the year-earlier period. The production declines cost Pemex about 300 billion pesos ($23.4 billion) in lost sales last year. This forced Mexico’s government, which relies on oil revenue to fund about a third of its budget, to raise taxes to narrow the widest budget deficit in about 20 years. London-based BP Plc may surpass Pemex this year to become the third-largest producer of crude oil in the world, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. Pemex and BP rank third and fourth in world crude oil production, respectively, the data shows. Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest oil producer followed by the National Iranian Oil Co. Pemex’s natural-gas production may fall to 6.1 billion cubic feet a day in 2011 and 6.25 billion cubic feet in 2012, Morales said in the presentation. Pemex extracted 7.045 billion cubic feet of gas through November. Crude oil for February delivery rose 26 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $81.77 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since Oct. 9, 2008. Futures touched $82 during the session, equaling the intraday high on Oct. 21.

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