Mexico’s Pemex seeks control of U.S. oil firm’s billion-barrel find

MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) - When U.S. oil firm Talos Energy found nearly a billion barrels off Mexico’s southern Gulf coast two years ago, it marked the first discovery by a foreign firm since the oil industry was nationalized eight decades earlier.

Now Mexico’s state-run oil firm Pemex wants to take over the lucrative project, according to two former Mexican energy officials and two company executives with knowledge of internal Pemex discussions.

The Pemex push to run drilling in the oilfield comes amid the ongoing drive by leftist President Andres Lopez Obrador to return more control of Mexico’s energy sector to its state oil firm. His predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, ended Pemex’s monopoly and started auctioning off oilfields to private companies in 2015.

Talos was the first to find oil, in a shallow-water field it named Zama after the Maya word for dawn. Wresting control of the project from the company now would strike a symbolic blow to Mexico’s biggest economic policy change in decades and could further chill investment by the world’s top energy firms, oil executives and industry experts told Reuters.

Pemex has a potential claim to control over Zama because it has drilling rights to an adjacent field. The oil deposit likely extends into Pemex territory – although the firm has yet to prove that by drilling. The two companies began talks last year about a merged project and will later negotiate how to split revenues and who gets operational control. If the talks deadlock, Lopez Obrador’s Energy Ministry would settle disputes and appoint one company to oversee drilling.

“If Pemex does end up operating it, that would not send a good signal to private investors,” said one executive from an oil major with several offshore projects in Mexico.

Neither Pemex nor the Energy Ministry responded to requests for comment. Lopez Obrador’s office did not respond to written questions.

The liberalization of Mexico’s energy sector has stalled since Lopez Obrador took office in December. The president last week heaped new criticism on his predecessor’s energy policy, calling it a “giveaway” of public resources to corporations.