Mexico could pump 250,000 bpd from Tamil

By Robert Campbell

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A complex of four oil fields anchored by the deepwater Tamil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico could eventually produce up to 250,000 barrels per day of oil, a senior executive of Mexican state oil company Pemex said on Friday.

The Tamil find, Mexico's first commercial oil discovery in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, would also be one of the biggest in the Gulf. BP Plc's (BP.L) Thunder Horse field, currently the largest Gulf producer, is rated at a maximum capacity of 250,000 bpd.

Morales downplayed the impact of the discovery, however, noting that Pemex has to make multiple major discoveries to keep its head above water as its older fields decline.

"We're not pretending that we have a giant reserve that is changing our lives," Pemex exploration and production chief Carlos Morales told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit.

"Tamil is something modest, it is not sufficiently large to change our strategy."

Pemex is wrestling with sliding production at its main oil fields in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, especially the gigantic Cantarell field. The slide in yields at Cantarell had dragged down Mexican oil production by more than 20 percent since 2004 and threatens a key source of foreign exchange and government revenues.

The four fields of the Tamil complex could hold between 300 million and 400 million barrels of heavy crude oil, Morales said.

Pemex engineers are currently looking at design options for the complex, which is expected to start up in 2015. Among the options being considered is a platform connected by a 70 kilometer undersea pipeline to existing fields in shallower waters or ships modified to serve as a floating production facility.