Pemex Fracking Depends on Attractive Contracts After Support Ends in 2027

The Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP) will stop providing resources to Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) starting in 2027, El CEO reported on August 18, and the state oil company will require private partners with hydraulic fracturing expertise, such as Baker Hughes or Chevron, to scale that technique.

In 2025 the agency provided Pemex with 396,200 million pesos and 100,400 million in the first half of 2026, according to El CEO's report. President Claudia Sheinbaum's administration opened the door to fracking to improve production at the state-owned company, which adopted mixed contracts to share risk with the private sector. Paul Sánchez, a visiting professor at the University of California San Diego, said there is no money and that the mixed contracts have not been attractive or robust enough for banks to finance them. Experts consulted by El Economista on August 16 called for more sophisticated and flexible contracts, without rigid cost-recovery caps and with legal stability and international arbitration, to draw private capital into unconventional plays.

The Scientific Committee on Energy Sovereignty and Unconventional Natural Gas Deposits, made up of 54 specialists, delineated the Burgos and Sabinas-Burro-Picachos basins, with 53.8 and 67 trillion cubic feet of potential resources respectively, out of a national total of 141.5 trillion. The Tampico-Misantla basin, the most geologically promising, was excluded due to social and environmental conditions; it accounts for 20.7 trillion cubic feet, or 14.63% of the total. Energy specialist Ramsés Pech noted that "an unconventional well demands greater upfront investment and continuous drilling," and with a rigid recovery cap the private partner cannot recoup its capital within a reasonable horizon. Analysts agree that a rounds-based model is needed to attract Baker Hughes, Chevron, Schlumberger, or Halliburton, companies with experience in U.S. and Argentine shale.

The next point to watch is the contractual design Pemex presents for the assignment of the Burgos and Sabinas-Burro-Picachos basins, and the response of companies with fracturing capacity. Without a framework that guarantees capital recovery and regulatory stability, unconventional development in Mexico will struggle to move beyond the pilot phase.

This article was written with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.