Mexico City.– Grupo Carso, owned by billionaire Carlos Slim, announced on Friday that it signed an exploration and extraction services contract with Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) for the Lakach deepwater gas field, in which it will invest 1.2 billion dollars.
Carso explained that under the contract, known as CSIEE, Pemex will retain ownership of the field and its reserves. First commercial production is expected in approximately two and a half years, he added in a statement.
In mid-June, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Slim wanted to enter into a joint venture with Pemex to revive a gas project that was left adrift after a deal with a U.S. company fell apart.
The president was referring, without naming it, to Lakach, the country’s first deepwater natural gas field, which has been abandoned twice, most recently by Pemex and the US-based New Fortress Energy (NFE), which broke off an agreement in late 2023 to develop the complex field after they could not agree on the terms, including the price of gas.
Carso said in the statement that it will build a gas conditioning station on land to treat hydrocarbons and condensates for sale, but did not provide further details.
The company said that the US company Talos Energy, of which Carso acquired a 49.9 percent stake in Mexico last year, and FCC Construcción, a subsidiary of Spain’s FCC, will be its partners in the CSIEE.
Carso did not provide details on when work would begin or other terms of the contract with Pemex, which has spent more than $1.4 billion on the development of Lakach.
Plans to produce gas at the field were previously cancelled in 2016 because it was deemed too expensive.
In March, Reuters revealed that Pemex and Slim teams were talking about developing Lakach, seen as a potential gateway to a new Mexican gas frontier because of the depth of the field.
Sources said the oil company had declared finding a new partner after NFE a priority.
With information from Reuters
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