Shell abandons the oil fields it acquired during Peña Nieto's energy reform in Mexico

Oil giant Shell has begun its withdrawal from its oil fields in Mexico.

The company, which served as operator or financial partner in 12 oil contracts - derived from Enrique Peña Nieto's energy reform - has given up and renounced the fields won in the oil rounds of the previous six-year term.

According to data from the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), of the ten contracts for which there is an Early Termination Procedure due to resignation, only one has concluded and the rest are in process.

In another field, where it exclusively appeared as a financial partner, an early conclusion has also been requested due to reduction and return of the deposit and, finally, in the block in association with Pemex, the private company transferred the entire project to the parastatal, at the end of the year. past.

Although this newspaper sought out the oil company to learn more about the details of these defections, the firm declined to comment.

The bubbles of celebration for the fields tendered to private oil companies in the previous six-year term have evaporated.

If in 2018 everything was celebration and promises of investment by Shell for at least 800 million dollars after obtaining nine deep-water oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico, now it is time to mark the withdrawal.

Most of the resignation requests presented by the oil company before the regulatory body, the CNH, attribute the early termination of the contracts, with validity from 30 to 35 years, to the poor results that have resulted from its geological and geophysical analyzes .

In its most recent resignation request, at the end of February, Shell declined to be the operator of a 3,000 square kilometer field, in deep waters, off the coasts of Veracruz and Tabasco.

“The geological and geophysical studies have been integrated and, together, show limited prospecting for the contractual area, one in the limited thickness of the deposits and poor quality of the deposits,” the private company explained in its statement of reasons to the CNH. .

During the CNH session where said resignation was discussed, the president of the regulatory body, Agustín Díaz, acknowledged that Shell has not had successes and they have reviewed the resignations of “practically all contracts,” he declared.

In that same forum, Commissioner Héctor Moreira emphasized that despite the evidence that there are oil resources in the area, it is not profitable for the company due to the extraction costs.

Three months earlier, in November 2023, the Anglo-Dutch firm requested in cascade before the CNH the renunciation of four deepwater fields.

The four blocks operated by the company under a 35-year license are located in the Perdido Area, off the coast of Tamaulipas.

A few days ago, the oil company gave Pemex the entire field on a block that it had won together with the state oil company in 2018, where the private company was the operator and the parastatal appeared only as a financial partner. Now it will be in its hands to complete the stage of exploration.

Because many of the renunciation processes are still in process, only in one case, in the renunciation of a contractual area off the coasts of Tabasco and Campeche, did the oil company receive a fine of $732,000 last October.

The financial penalty set by the CNH was due to the fact that the oil company did not accredit the Work Units (UT) in accordance with the Minimum Work Program (PMT).

In addition to its role as a field operator, Shell was also involved as a financial partner in a couple of projects.

Miriam Grunstein, a specialist in energy law, explains that it is not normal that companies as large as Shell, with highly specialized teams of geological information experts, have not detected the poor resource potential that they now allege in their resignation requests.

“I think they saw the outlook in Mexico in a very optimistic way.

If companies are leaving because the projects are dysfunctional, what was it that we put out to tender? Or what did the companies interpret? ”She questions.

For the expert, the defection of Shell and other private oil companies reflects the crisis of Peña Nieto's reform and affirms that Mexico celebrated too soon an oil bonanza that now encounters another reality: “The tenders did not seem like tenders, they seemed like parties, that “It was highly atypical,” he says.

The academic associated with the Mexico Center at Rice University adds that although the oil reform of the last six-year term was designed by specialists, it did not prosper due to the internal problems of the Administration and now, in this Government, the operational debacle of Pemex is a bad sign. for the rest of the companies, who will seek to invest in countries with greater certainty in hydrocarbons.

Shell is not the only private company that has given up on 'black gold' deposits.

Other companies such as BP or Repsol have also decided to abandon the contracts obtained in the oil rounds after their analyses.

However, the Anglo-Dutch company was one of the players that attracted the most attention and expectations due to the number of contracts awarded, the second highest, only behind Pemex.

A company video was optimistic about the findings of what it considered “the most ambitious exploration program in Shell's history.”

Now, the recording will be part of the anecdote of the handful of oil projects that, at least under the protection of the Anglo-Dutch oil company, did not come to be.

Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter

and the

WhatsApp channel

and receive all the key information on current events in this country.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_