But the source told Reuters that fully reversing the loss will only be possible by early August, which in the meantime will impact total production from offshore fields, from which debt-laden Pemex extracts most of its hydrocarbon output. He did not provide details on a phase-out schedule.
“We are short of a little less than 100,000 barrels (per day). It is expected by the first days of August to recover all the crude,” he said on condition of anonymity.
The recovery plan implies that Pemex will have a cumulative loss through the end of July of at least 2 million barrels of crude, according to Reuters estimates, in addition to the 700,000 barrels lost on the day of the incident. The source agreed on the estimate.
Pemex did not respond to a request for comment on what the source said about the accumulated daily loss.
Sum of claims
Cantarell, which produced more than two million bpd two decades ago, currently produces about 170,000 bpd. Together with Ku-Maloob-Zaap, which produces some 620,000 bpd in Pemex’s northeast marine region, they contribute around 41% of the 1.9 million barrels of crude and condensate production reported by the state-owned company.
The Pemex production chief, Angel Cid, said over the weekend in a video released by the company that 600 million cubic feet of gas are being distributed from the area where the fire occurred to lift Cantarell platforms and fuel gas.
Pemex has registered several spectacular and fatal accidents in recent years at its facilities, both in refineries and in production centers. In August 2021, a gas leak on an offshore platform caused a fire that killed seven workers and left behind production of 1.6 million barrels.
While the Government argues that it received the company at the end of 2018 in poor condition and on the verge of bankruptcy, opponents and analysts warn that its management in this administration has been ineffective in increasing production and preventing claims.
Cid and Romero said on Friday that the fire – which left two dead and one missing – had been fought on time, preventing its spread to the other four processing centers in the area, which is part of the so-called Sonda de Campeche and is made up of a series of marine fields located about 85 kilometers from Ciudad del Carmen, in the southeastern state of Campeche.
Pemex’s safety performance indicators have deteriorated according to its own figures. The accumulated frequency index -accidents per million man-hours worked- rose to 0.58 in the first quarter of 2023 from 0.37 in the same period of the previous year, while the accumulated severity index -days lost per million man-hours worked- went to 32 from 11 in the same period.