USA's 3rd largest foreign supplier of U.S. oil due to be net oil importer

John Padilla, director of finance and advisory for IPD Latin America, argues that with Mexico’s oil production falling, and its demand for gasoline and other petroleum products on the rise, Mexico could cease to be an oil exporter around 2010 or 2011.

NVDL: Oops.

clipped from www.chron.com Mexico has long relied on production from the country’s largest oil field, the offshore Cantarell field in the Bay of Campeche. But Cantarell’s output has been dropping precipitously. Production at Cantarell peaked in 2004 at 2.14 million barrels a day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. During the first nine months of this year, Cantarell’s production averaged less than 1.1 million barrels a day, and during September output dipped below 1 million barrels a day, Padilla said. With Cantarell’s output sliding, Mexican energy officials have pinned their hopes on the Chicontepec field, which holds 38 percent of the country’s total reserves. Last year, Chicontepec produced 31,000 barrels a day, Padilla noted. The target for that field is 600,000 barrels a day. But to achieve that goal, Padilla said, Pemex would have to drill more than 15,000 wells, and the state oil company to date has not come close to that.