We complain about Bush not doing enough for energy independence but I had no idea that things in Mexico were this dire..........eight years for the Cantarell field to fade so badly that Mexico would have to import oil??? That's unbelievable........it will put the US in a much worse position than it already is. And what does that do to illegal immigration.....what a mess!
___________________________________________________________
Mexico Strives to Save Oil Field
El Universal
Gulf of Mexico - In March 1971, a fisherman named Rudesindo Cantarell took a few geologists from state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos to this spot, where he had seen oil slicks. Cantarell didn´t know it, but he had stumbled across one of the largest offshore oil fields ever found.
A few decades and 12 billion barrels of oil later, the field that bears Cantarell´s name is dying, and Pemex, as the state-owned company is known, is struggling to stave off the field´s demise.
From January 2006 through February 2007, Cantarell lost a staggering one-fifth of its production, with daily output falling to 1.6 million barrels from 2 million.
The oil industry was stunned.
Cantarell, which currently produces one of every 50 barrels of oil on the world market, is fading so fast analysts believe Mexico may become an oil importer in eight years. That would batter Mexico´s economy, which depends on oil exports to fund 40 percent of its government spending.
The continued deterioration of the world´s second-biggest field by output would also put pressure on prices on the global oil market, where supplies are barely keeping up with growing demand as it is.
And it would leave the United States even more dependent on Middle Eastern supplies - and that much more vulnerable to political tumult in that region.
GLOBAL ISSUE
The demise of Cantarell highlights a global issue: Nearly one-quarter of the world´s daily oil output of 85 million barrels is pumped from the biggest 20 fields, according to estimates from Wood Mackenzie, a Scotland-based oil consulting firm.
And many of those fields, discovered decades ago, could soon follow in Cantarell´s footsteps.
It´s widely believed that the world´s biggest oil fields have already been found. In the decades leading up to the 1970s, the world discovered eight big fields that produced between 500,000 to 1 million barrels a day, according to Matthew Simmons, a veteran oil industry banker.
During the 1970s and 1980s, only two were found. Since then, only one - the Kashagan field in Kazakhstan - has the potential to easily top the 500,000 barrel-a-day mark.
Two decades ago, about a dozen fields produced more than 1 million barrels a day. Now there are only four, one of which is Cantarell.
The future of two others, discovered more than 50 years ago, remains in question. Some analysts speculate Saudi Arabia´s Ghawar, the biggest field by far, could begin a gradual decline within a decade or so. Another, Kuwait´s Burgan, is showing signs of maturity. In November of 2005, Kuwait Oil Co. lowered its estimate of the field´s sustainable production level to 1.7 million barrels a day from 1.9 million a day.
Replacing big gushers is difficult. Industrialized countries, which tapped out their big fields years earlier, haven´t been able to maintain output despite finding large numbers of smaller fields and investing heavily in technology. Alaska production, hurt by declines at the giant Prudhoe Bay field, dropped from 2 million barrels a day in 1988 to a current rate of about 900,000 a day.
"The world faces a situation where we have production from smaller and smaller fields trying to keep up with declines from the big fields like Cantarell," says Mike Rodgers, a partner at industry consulting firm PFC Energy in Houston.
"You´re on a treadmill trying to keep up, and you get to a point where you can´t make any more forward progress."
POLITICS GETS IN THE WAY
Some industry veterans are more sanguine. They argue that technology and high prices are helping tap vast sources of so-called "unconventional" crude oil, such as Canada´s tar sands.
Plus, they say technologies will also delay any decline in big fields by dislodging billions of barrels of additional oil that used to be too costly or difficult to reach.
In Texas and California, fields discovered in the late 19th century are still productive.
"The world has managed depending on giant oil fields for the last several decades," says Khalid Al-Roldan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington, D.C.
But even if there is enough oil under the ground, the politics above the ground get in the way. The vast majority of the world´s remaining big fields are in developing countries and run by government-owned oil companies, which are often less efficient than their investor-owned counterparts.
State-owned companies in many countries, like those in Venezuela and Iran, are milked by their government for taxes, which reduces their ability to invest in new oil technology.
Legal restrictions make it hard for national oil companies to work with foreign firms, cutting them off from techniques used in the rest of the industry.
Pemex suffers many of these limitations.
Its last two chief executives failed to persuade Congress to remove foreign investment restrictions, which are embedded in the Constitution and viewed as an embodiment of Mexican nationalism.
The new president, Felipe Calderón, is expected to try to end the investment restrictions, but he too faces long odds.
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY
Cantarell, like all giant oil fields, boasts an unusual geological history.
Geologists say it may have been formed thanks to the asteroid that slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula some 65 million years ago - the same event that is believed to have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The impact caused giant cracks underground that allowed oil from previous millennia to accumulate in a single spot.
The field lay unnoticed until Cantarell, the fisherman, kept getting his nets smeared with oil as he trawled for shrimp in the 1960s.
Assuming that the oil came from Pemex operations, he regularly hauled his oil-stained nets hundreds of miles to the nearest Pemex offices in the neighboring state of Veracruz to seek compensation.
Finally, local Pemex officials say, the oil giant grew so exasperated with Cantarell that it went to check out his story.
The find was spectacular.
UNDERGROUND VOLCANO
Unlike most oil fields, which have a thin band of oil-rich rock that stretches for miles in every direction, Cantarell is shaped like a massive underground volcano, with huge amounts of oil in a relatively small place.
While Saudi Arabia´s Ghawar takes up about 2,700 square miles, Cantarell is just 70 square miles. From one platform, one can see the entire field.
Cantarell´s formation made the field easy to exploit.
It had so much initial pressure that Pemex´s first well at the field produced 36,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with a few hundred barrels at most wells.
The field is also in relatively shallow waters - it is 50 yards deep.
The water is so calm one can spot barracuda swimming between the platforms and there is no need for expensive deep-sea platforms.
BATTLING COMPLACENCY
Today, Cantarell needs just 208 wells to produce the equivalent of one-fourth the entire U.S. oil output, while the United States needs hundreds of thousands of wells for a similar haul.
But the field´s abundance also bred a sense of complacency. As is the case in many oil-rich countries, Mexico relied on oil to foot its current spending but gave little thought to what happens when the oil runs out.
Last year, Cantarell was responsible for some US$25 billion of the US$53 billion that Pemex handed over to the government.
The steep tax bill has left Pemex chronically short of cash to invest in finding new fields to replace its aging giant.
Cantarell produced about 1 million barrels a day from 1980 to the mid-1990s, when the field began to slowly lose pressure.
This happens to all fields: They begin with enormous natural pressure because they are buried deeply beneath layers of heavy rock.
But from the moment a well pricks a field and the oil is taken out, the pressure eases, like letting air out of a balloon.
So in 1998, Pemex began injecting massive amounts of nitrogen into the field, which was the oil-field equivalent of squeezing a balloon from the bottom.
Output more than doubled to a peak of 2.3 million barrels a day in 2004.
TECHNICAL SUCCESS
That decision was hailed as a technical success, but it was just a temporary fix: It only sucked the field dry faster and set the stage for a steeper decline.
Now, Pemex´s lack of money and technology is a handicap in managing the decline.
read more......
banderasnews.com |
