Mexico's Embattled Pemex Oil Firm Eyes Recovery

MEXICO CITY, Nov 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 04th Nov, 2016 ) : Mexico's struggling state energy firm Pemex expects oil production to fall again next year but bounce back in 2018 and return the company to financial health in 2019, its director said Thursday.

Pemex chief Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya presented a 2016-2021 business plan that forecasts production falling to 1.9 million barrels of crude per day in 2017, down from 2.1 million this year. But output will surpass two million barrels again in 2018 and steadily rise every year, reaching nearly 2.2 million barrels in 2021, according to the document, although that level would remain well below the 3.

4 million produced daily in 2004.

President Enrique Pena Nieto enacted a landmark energy reform in 2014 that reopened the sector to private investors for the first time since 1938. To boost production, Gonzalez Anaya said, Pemex needs to "aggressively develop" farmouts, a sort of partnership now allowed under the reform.

The company expects to have a Primary surplus of $438 million next year and "financial balance" in 2019, he said. Hit by falling global oil prices, the company is making $5.5 billion in budget cuts this year while the government injected $4.2 billion in liquidity to prop up the firm.