Maximino field to be largest yet in Mexican Perdido, Pemex says

By Carlos Manuel Rodriguez and Brendan Case
Bloomberg News

Petroleos Mexicanos’s Maximino field will probably be the largest oil discovery on the Mexican side of the Perdido basin, the state-owned oil producer said.

Final test results on the field are expected within weeks, said Carlos Morales, the exploration and production chief at Pemex, as the Mexico City-based company is known. Morales spoke to reporters today at an oil conference in Cancun.

Pemex is exploring deep waters in a bid to replicate success in U.S. waters by companies including Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and to restore lost output after Mexico’s biggest discovery, Cantarell, collapsed over the past decade. Pemex officials have called Maximino the “jewel in the crown” of its deepwater portfolio.

Maximino, Pemex’s third ultra-deepwater discovery in the Perdido area of the Gulf, is at a depth of 2,900 meters (9,515 feet), the most ever for the oil producer. Last year Pemex made its first two commercially viable deepwater discoveries in the Perdido area after 23 attempts. Perdido is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) east of the Texas-Mexico border in the Gulf of Mexico.

Exploration in Maximino, originally scheduled for November 2010, was delayed several times amid safety concerns that prompted Pemex to try ultra deepwater equipment in shallower projects.

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