Vital Trivia

Although Vital Trivia has been mainly concerned with hydrocarbon depletion from a UK perspective, as we really do have ringside seats for the main attraction with our indigenous oil, gas and coal extraction rates simultaneously collapsing as reserves deplete and our nuclear power stations reaching the end of their lives, today we turn our attention to Mexico.

Mexico is little talked about but a major player in the global peak oil game. The US and Mexico have a difficult relationship. The 3,141km land border is virtually unguarded with the interesting statistic of not only being the longest boundary between a first and third world country but also divides the largest income gap between any two contiguous countries. This might go someway to explaining the 8 million Mexicans in the US, 4.8 million there illegally.

Turning to oil, at approximately 3.8 million barrels per day (mbpd) Mexico is the world’s fifth largest oil producer after Russia (9.7), Saudi Arabia (9.5) US (7.5, less hurricane damage!) and Iran (3.9). Proximity to the worlds most oil hungry country sees much of this oil flowing to the US, Mexico is America’s second largest source of imported oil after Canada importing some 1.6mbpd. Mexico’s total extraction rate of 3.8mbpd minus their domestic consumption of 2mbpd (and rising) shows that this export to the US is almost 90% of Mexican export capacity.

The jewel in the Mexican crown is the super giant oil field, Cantarell. Discovered in 1976 and supporting extraction rates of just over 2mbpd makes Cantarell the second fastest flowing oil filed in the world after the Saudi field Ghawar.

Recent comment from a senior engineer at Pemex, the Mexican national oil company, suggests Cantarell is at the end of its life and about to experience a massive collapse in flow rate. This extract is from an interview obtained by Adam Porter of www.oilcast.com. The MP3 audio file of the this oilcast is available here.

The original volume of the field was estimated at 33 billion barrels, but the recoverable oil was some 16 billion. We have frantically pumped about 11 billion barrels throughout the life of the field. It is completing its natural cycle. Cantarell is a carbonated field, which in the future could show a deep decline of up to a 15 percent annually. If we factor in more efficient pumping, we could see an even higher depletion rate. That is without mentioning that other fields, like for instance Abkatun, is already showing a twenty percent annual decline for more than 5 years now.

The news here isn’t that Cantarell is peaking, that has been expected for some time but the rate of decline is extreme. It does seem plausible though, to have managed to extract 68% of a reservoirs ultimate recoverable reserve before the flow rate entered terminal decline is testament to the skilled Pemex engineers but it also guarantees a very rapid decline. That rate would remove over half a million barrels per day in two years and almost a million barrels per day in four. The graph shows just the effect of Cantarell peaking, optimistically assuming that declines from other fields can be compensated for with new projects.

Mexico can’t replace that kind of decline which guarantees that America’s second largest oil supplier is peaking. Mexico’s decline is really America’s problem; they are the country left looking elsewhere for another million barrels per day over the next few years. Wherever they look however they are going to see the same thing, peaking flow rates and desperate buyers.

This post was written by Chris Vernon