From the Field

Mexico’s Pemex to stop farm-outs: AMLO

MEXICO CITY, February 22, 2019 – Mexico’s state-owned Pemex will not engage in any new farm-out partnerships for the time being, international media reported Thursday.

A farm-out auction initially set for February and rescheduled for October is now unlikely to move forward following comments by Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) that no new farm-outs should take place before oil is produced from existing projects.

Instead, Pemex will be placing more emphasis on service contracts to help it develop fields, Bloomberg reported.

The freeze follows the National Hydrocarbons Commission’s cancellation of the Round 3.2 and Round 3.3 E&P auctions in December after coming under pressure from AMLO’s administration. Those tenders had also been slated to take place in February.