(Adds comments from Zepeda, CNH president, paragraphs 9-11)
MEXICO CITY, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Mexico's oil regulatorannounced on Monday a final list of 17 oil companiesrepresenting a dozen countries that have pre-qualified to bid onthe country's first-ever deep water oil auctions, set for Dec.5.
The highly anticipated tenders include an auction to pick apartner for Mexican national oil company Pemex to develop itspromising Trion field, as well as 10 separate deep water fields,including four clustered around Trion just south of Mexico'smaritime border with the United States.
All the fields are in the country's territorial waters inthe Gulf of Mexico, in the Perdido Fold Belt and the Salinabasin along the southern rim of the Gulf.
The pre-qualified companies constitute a total of 15bidders, eight of which successfully sought to pre-qualify asindividual operators while seven consortia did so as well.
The pre-qualified individual bidders are Australia's BHPBilliton, Britain's BP, China's CNOOC,the United States' ExxonMobil, Malaysia's Petronas, Mexico's Pemex, Norway's Statoil and France's Total.
The seven consortia are Atlantic Rim and Royal Dutch Shell ; Eni and Lukoil; Murphy, Ophir, Petronas unit PC Carigali and Sierra OffshoreExploration; PC Carigali and Sierra; Statoil, BP and Total;Total and ExxonMobil; and Chevron along with Pemex andInpex Corp.
The later consortium marks the first time Pemex has soughtto tie up with another oil company in the hopes of jointlydeveloping an exploration and production project.
Juan Carlos Zepeda, president of the oil regulator known asthe CNH, said it will not be known until Dec. 5 whether thepre-qualified firms will bid on Trion or the other deep waterblocks up for grabs.
"It's a large number of bidders," said Zepeda.
"We have companies that are competing as individuals and asconsortia, and some of them are even participating in more thanone consortium," he said, adding that about half of Mexico'sprospective oil resources are located in the Gulf's deep waters.
Zepeda emphasized that companies are barred from biddingmore than once on the same project.
The auctions will mark the fourth phase of the so-calledRound One tender, a major part of an energy reform launched in2013 that ended the decades-long monopoly enjoyed by Pemex andaims to reverse a dozen years of declining crude output. (Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Bernadette Baum,Steve Orlofsky and David Gregorio)
