Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos produced an average of 2.68 million barrels of crude oil per day in January, down 9.2 percent from the same month last year.

Pemex announced its January results on Friday, noting that for the first time the Ku Maloob Zaap heavy oil field in the Gulf of Mexico became the country's most productive oil field with an average output of 787,000 bpd.

It took over that position from Cantarell, which had been the most productive field since 1979 but continued its rapid decline, falling 38 percent to 772,000 bpd.

Natural gas production, meanwhile, climbed to a record high for a month of January to 7.09 billion cubic feet per day.

Crude oil exports for the first month of the year totaled 1.36 million bpd, down 2.66 percent relative to January of last year, while Pemex's revenues from the sale of crude to its customers abroad plunged 55.2 percent to $1.59 billion.

That was due in large part to a sharp drop in the average price of oil last month, $37.65, down from a price of $80.15 in January 2008.

Pemex produced 1.56 million bpd of petroleum products, mainly gasoline and diesel, while sales of those products, including imports, came in at a total of 1.75 million bpd, valued at 35.65 billion pesos (some $2.54 billion).

The company sold 772,200 bpd of gasoline, 329,700 bpd of which was imported.

In January, Pemex produced just over 1 million tons of petrochemical products.

President Felipe Calderon last year sought to push a controversial plan through Congress to overhaul Pemex, including allowing the cash-strapped company to take on private oil firms as full partners in the exploration and drilling of new deepwater deposits in the Gulf of Mexico.

But leftist lawmakers fiercely opposed the initial bill, claiming that the aim of the government was to privatize Pemex, created after President Lazaro Cardenas' nationalization of the oil industry in 1938.

After months of debate, a revised bill was passed that gives Pemex more freedom to undertake projects with private firms, but excludes the provisions of Calderon's original initiative that would have allowed them a stake in the oil or any eventual profits.

Pemex said in January it plans to invest a record $19.4 billion this year as part of a series of countercyclical spending programs intended to combat the global economic crisis.

The company is trying to boost production at Ku Maloob Zaap and an onshore oil project known as Chicontepec, but most analysts say it is unlikely the lower output at Cantarell -- located in the Gulf beneath Mexico's Bay of Campeche -- can be offset by higher production at other fields.

Source:
http://www.rigzone.com
By Agencia EFE S.A.