Businessman and billionaire Carlos Slim has set his sights 1,200 meters deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The richest man in the country will disburse more than 1 billion dollars to reactivate the Lakach field, the first deep-water natural gas extraction project in Mexican territory. The potential of the field, discovered in 2006, has been truncated on more than one occasion due to the lack of resources of the state oil company, Pemex, combined with little interest from other investors. However, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador seeks to revive this project in his final months in office and has touched base with the owner of Grupo Carso. Without mentioning the name of the field, the president assured last week that Slim will participate in a joint venture with Pemex in gas extraction: “It is a gas field that was left lying around during the last government. About 2,000 million dollars were invested and we are looking for all those facilities to be used and it seems that a Slim company is going to participate, you are already seeing it,” he declared last Friday.
The president’s statements came after his meeting with the Mexican magnate behind closed doors at the National Palace. According to López Obrador, it was the businessman who requested an audience with him to talk about this and other energy initiatives. Sources close to the project have confirmed to EL PAÍS that the partnership between Slim and Pemex will be formalized in the coming weeks, although the business conglomerate declined to make official comments on these plans.
The promise of natural gas from this deepwater field has been cut short by a pair of failed attempts. The high costs of developing the project, coupled with competitive US natural gas prices, have derailed its viability in the past. According to official figures, the investment to launch Lakach exceeds 1.1 billion dollars, an amount that only a businessman of Slim’s stature could assume. “I think it is an excellent new. Slim handles government relations very well, and in these administrations, he is a very important factor,” says Luis Miguel Labardini, an expert in Energy issues, about this attempt to revive this vein of natural gas in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico.
Lakach deposit was discovered by Pemex in 2006 and for a decade the parastatal invested around 1.4 billion dollars for its exploration. However, the increase in costs, coupled with the oil company’s troubled financial situation, forced Pemex to strand its development in 2016. It was not until 2022 when the plan was reactivated by the American firm New Fortress Energy (NFE). , but months later its partnership with the parastatal was abruptly broken and it returned to the hands of Pemex. At that time, the oil company adjusted upward the costs of the coveted gas field. According to official figures, supported by the National Hydrocarbons Commission, the investment to launch this vein, which has 900,000 million cubic feet of natural gas, will be about 1,192 million dollars, with an operating cost of 636 million of dollars. In this diagnosis, Pemex calculated its development from 2022 to 2034.
The interest of the López Obrador Government in relaunching a natural gas vein contrasts with the decline in Mexico’s natural gas production and the country’s growing dependence on imports of the resource from the United States. If in 2010 Mexico produced more than 6,000 million cubic feet per day, last January the figure dropped to 4,900 million per day at the end of 2023, according to official figures.
At the same time, the investments of Slim’s companies in the energy sector accumulate. Through his constellation of companies, the magnate participates in the construction of gas pipelines, rental of oil platforms and crude oil exploration. Among his investments in this field, his participation in the Zama, Ichalkil and Pokoch crude oil fields stands out. Just this Friday, Grupo Carso formalized the purchase of 100% of the share capital of PetroBal Operaciones Upstream. Thus, Slim will have a stake in the oil fields that are part of said company, Ichalkil and Pokoch, located off the coast of Campeche. And last September, the American oil company Talos Energy closed the sale of a 50% stake in its oil business in the country to the Zamajal company, of the Carso Group, for 125 million dollars.
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