Pemex Update: Production down nearly 10% in 2008

Final numbers came in today on the decline of Mexican oil production.  A good Bloomberg article can be found here and is briefly cited below.

Mexico may be a smaller example of what Saudi Arabia has in store when its super giant field Ghawar enters its final death throes.  Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company, gets 30% of its oil from the Cantarell field.  Pressure is declining fast at Cantarell.  According to Bloomberg’s reporting, daily production at Cantarell declined by around 500,000 barrels a day in 2008 to just over 1 million barrels per day.  In December, only 811,000 were extracted from Cantarell.

The beginning of the Bloomberg story linked above:

Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, said crude output fell 9.2 percent in 2008, the largest decline since World War II, as production fell at its largest field.

Production dropped to 2.799 million barrels a day, from 3.083 million barrels a year earlier, Pemex, as the Mexico City- based company is known, said today in a statement. Pemex extracted 31 percent less crude last year from Cantarell, the world’s third-largest deposit.

Pemex may have missed out on $20 billion of sales as plummeting production coincided with record crude oil prices last year, the Mexican Energy Ministry has said. Crude futures traded in New York have dropped more than $100 a barrel since touching a record $147.27 a barrel on July 11.