Mexico opens bids on integrated oil contracts

Mexico's state-owned oil company has announced the first of a new sort of oil exploration and production contract that allows greater private involvement in the tightly controlled sector.

Petroleos Mexicanos is offering six fields in three areas that produced oil in the 1960s, but have been largely ignored since then.

The company said the fields in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco currently produce about 13,000 barrels per day, but could produce as much as 50,000 with the right technology.

The fields have a probable reserves of about 200 million barrels of crude.

The integrated contracts approved two years ago, allow Pemex to assign blocks of oilfield to private companies and pay them, at least in part, on performance.

- AP