(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- In January, Mexico will hold its biggest auction of drilling rights to date, leasing access to offshore areas as well as opportunities to work with state-owned Pemex in the 500 million-barrel equivalent Nobilis-Maximino field. As many as three additional auctions also are expected next year. But presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed that if he wins, he’ll review contracts awarded to producers including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell.
Venezuela’s once-mighty oil industry is in free fall after the regimes of Hugo Chávez and successor Nicolás Maduro drained the state-owned oil production company of cash. Output has fallen in 9 of the past 10 years, cratering last year to the lowest level since 1990.
In 2015, Exxon made a giant oil find off the coast of Guyana. The new fields could contain almost 3 billion barrels of crude.
Brazil has some of the world’s top oil engineering talent, but it needs capital. The government plans several auctions of drilling rights by 2019. The wild card: Ongoing corruption scandals make it an unreliable partner.
To contact the authors of this story: Joe Carroll in Houston at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net, Sabrina Valle in Rio De Janeiro at svalle@bloomberg.net, Adam Williams in Mexico City at awilliams111@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Pat Regnier at pregnier3@bloomberg.net.
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