Mexico's Calderon says oil data too bleak to ignore

CANCUN, Mexico, April 3 (Reuters) - President Felipe Calderon said on Thursday that the outlook for Mexico's flagging oil industry was too grim for political bickering to stand in the way of an oil industry reform.

Calderon, whose conservative party lawmakers are battling to persuade opposition parties to back an oil reform proposal that could lower barriers to foreign partners in high-risk areas like deep-sea oil, said the country was losing billions of dollars in lost oil revenues and reserves were still falling.

"It would be a catastrophe to ignore these data because of fear, political interest or group interests," Calderon told a meeting of foreign oil ministers in the Caribbean resort of Cancun.

Calderon said Mexico's proved oil and gas reserves were set to slip by a further 8 percent to 13.5 billion barrels of crude equivalent (bce) between now and 2012.

"We estimate that by 2012 we will have proved reserves of just 13.5 billion barrels of crude equivalent, which means a drop of 1.2 billion barrels which at today's prices would be more or less $800 billion," he told the second Afrolac summit.

Calderon said a drop in crude production over the last three years had left Mexico losing some $9 billion a year in oil export revenues.

State oil monopoly Pemex's crude production has slipped from peaks in 2004 because of declining yields at Mexico's huge but aging Cantarell field and a lack of new big projects to compensate.

"Even though prices are higher, each barrel that we fail to extract has a cost for development in Mexico," Calderon said.

Mexico's proved reserves have dropped from 20 billion bce at the end of 2002 to 14.7 billion bce at the end of 2007 due to a lack of investment in exploration during seven decades of one-party rule that ended in 2000. (Reporting by Jose Cortazar; Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Gary Hill)