10-12-04

President Vicente Fox said that his country has started deep prospecting operations in the Gulf of Mexico "before the Cubans or the Americans take our oil."

Noting the location of large petroleum reserves in a Gulf basin bordering the respective territorial waters of the United States and Cuba, Fox said it was "urgent that we take advantage of our own oil."
The president's comments came during the inauguration of an international airport in Queretaro, a city about 200 km (120 miles) northwest of the capital.

While Cuba has been trying to entice international firms into prospecting for oil in its Gulf waters, US companies already have extensive operations in the area.

In August, the chief of exploration and production for Mexico's state-owned Pemex, Luis Ramirez Corzo, said that some of the most promising oil finds in the Gulf were in an area straddling the border between US and Mexican territorial waters where American companies have also been exploring for the past two decades. Mexican authorities said at the time that they were concerned about the so-called "Popote Effect," or the draining of the fields by US oil companies working on the same deposits from their side of the maritime boundary.

Fox said in Queretaro that Mexico also plans to drill for natural gas at 5,000 locations in the Burgos Basin, in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, to "be able to be competitive and stop importing so much natural gas."
The president then turned from energy to the broader economy, hailing overall growth of 4.4 % and pointing to an increase of more than 15 % in non-oil exports. He also noted that in the nine years after the 1995 financial crisis, Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP) has doubled from $ 310 bn to $ 630 bn this year.
"The per-capita income of Mexicans has doubled from $ 3,100 in 1995 to $ 6,300 in 2004," Fox said.

Source: EFE