Mexico's Deepwater Exploration: Undisclosed Challenges to be Faced

The Mexican government through the National Hydrocarbon Commission (NHC) released the fourth bidding round for deep-water on Dec. 17, 2015. As expected, the NHC opted for a license contract as opposed to the production sharing schemes used in Round 1.1 and 1.2. In this round, the NHC is putting to bid 10 contract areas (see Figure 1) distributed within the Perdid Fold Belt (four areas) and Salina’s Basin (Cuenca Salina) (six areas), both deep-water regions in the Gulf of Mexico.

The bidding guidelines as well as the model license templates are available for review on the NHC’s website (http://ronda1.gob.mx/). The bidding process timeline is summarized in Figure 2.

So far, 20 companies have expressed interest in participating in Round 1.4, with the following 13 already requesting and paying for access to the data room (as of press time, 10 have started the prequalification process).

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