Pemex and Petrobras to Explore 160-Million-Year-Old Pre-Salt Rocks in Campeche

Pemex and Petrobras, the two largest state oil companies in Latin America, signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding on June 23 to explore the ultra-deep pre-salt beneath the Bay of Campeche, according to Bloomberg. This is the model that, since 2006, turned Brazil into one of the ten largest crude oil producers in the world.

The target is Jurassic formations roughly 160 million years old, eight times older than those producing on the US side of the Gulf, according to El Financiero. In 2018, Pemex drilled more than 7,800 meters below the seabed off Campeche and penetrated the salt layer, but the well was declared unproductive and its results remain confidential. The Mexican side of the Gulf has no commercial deep-water production, compared to roughly 2 million barrels per day on the US side, according to Bloomberg. Attempts to replicate Brazil's pre-salt model in Angola, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo yielded limited results, according to El Financiero.

The alliance comes as Pemex carries a debt of roughly $80 billion and declining production: 1.66 million barrels per day in the second quarter, below the official target of 1.8 million, according to company data cited by OilPrice. The pre-salt accounts for roughly 80% of Brazil's production today, according to Bloomberg, and the Tupi field, discovered in 2006, has delivered more than 4 billion barrels since 2010, according to El Financiero. Geologist Mark Rowan told that outlet that Pemex lacks the technology and capital on its own for this type of exploration, while deep-water wells require investments of hundreds of millions of dollars each. The memorandum also covers refining, petrochemicals, and fertilizers.

Teams from both companies have been reviewing seismic and geological data for weeks, and Petrobras's exploration and production director, Sylvia Anjos, announced on August 7 that the plan also covers other formations beneath the seabed. What comes next: confirming whether the data justifies a drilling campaign and how it will be financed.

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