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MEXICO CITY, July 5 (Reuters) - Mexico's energy ministry has
selected state-owned Pemex to operate a southern Mexico oilfield
it shares with a consortium led by U.S. company Talos Energy
, according to a document and three people close to the
decision.
Both Pemex and Talos had argued that they could best develop
the Zama field, estimated to hold nearly 700 million barrels of
oil, and said they had most of the oil reserves in their part of
the deposit.
The document, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, showed
that Energy Minister Rocio Nahle on Friday notified Pemex
president Octavio Romero of the decision.
"We have decided to designate Pemex Exploration and
Production as the operator of the unified area," the letter
said.
The letter also stated that Pemex had said in June that it
had the financial capacity to develop the project, held 50.43%
of the reserves on its side of the reservoir and already had
nearby infrastructure for receiving, storing and exporting the
crude oil.
Neither Pemex, Talos nor the Energy Ministry responded
immediately to requests for comment.
Zama's reserves, which extend into Pemex's neighboring area
Uchukil in the southern Gulf of Mexico, were discovered by the
Talos-led consortium in 2017 and were the biggest Mexican oil
discovery by a private company in decades.
The other members of the consortium are Germany's
Wintershall Dea and Britain's Harbour Energy,
previously known as Premier Oil.
The group and Pemex have been in talks since last year over
how to estimate each portion of the field's reserves and decide
who would be in the best position to operate it.
(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez, Adriana Barrera and Marianna
Parraga
Writing by Daina Beth Solomon
Editing by David Goodman
)
