Dzimpona onshore field has potential yield of 600 million barrels of oil equivalent
by the El Reportero’s wire services
President López Obrador will officially announce on Thursday the discovery of a large oil and gas field in Tabasco but there is no certainty that the deposit will be commercially viable. According to government officials consulted by the newspaper Milenio, the deposit to be announced is the Dzimpona onshore field, located in Comalcalco not far from the site of the Dos Bocas refinery, which is currently under construction on the Gulf of Mexico coast. The government believes the field has the initial potential to yield 600 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe). López Obrador will announce the field during an event to celebrate the 83rd anniversary of the expropriation of the Mexican oil industry. Former president Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the sector on March 18, 1938. López Obrador said earlier this month that there has been a lot of progress in terms of oil exploration and that the government has been lucky. Pemex CEO Octavio Romero said Sunday that the new discovery is “a large field surrounded by smaller ones that could together hold prospective resources comparable to those found in Ixachi and Quesqui.” Located in Veracrz, Ixachi is an onshore field discovered in 2019 with an estimated 2 billion boe of recoverable resources, mainly gas, Romero said. The Quesqui field, discovered in Tabasco in 2020, holds almost 1 billion boe, he said. Marco Cota, CEO of Talanza Energy Consulting, warned that it is too soon to call the latest discovery a success. He noted that presidents have traditionally made big announcements about oil discoveries on March 18, asserting that they tend to be mere political marketing, especially during election years, as is the case this year. Cota said that the government can only truly talk about success with respect to the discovery once it has been confirmed as commercially viable. Over the years, Pemex has identified dozens of potential fields that it has been unable to develop, he said.
