Fossil Energy – Mexico
The Mexican government is close to reaching a deal with U.S.-based Talos Energy over the future of a potentially lucrative shared crude discovery, the president said on Friday.
The handling of Zama, a deposit holding some 900 million barrels and located offshore in the southern Gulf of Mexico, which provoked a battle over who would run the project, is being closely watched by U.S. investors as a test of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s commitment to respecting private contracts in the politically sensitive energy sector.
Talos and its private partners discovered Zama in 2017 in a block won at auction under Lopez Obrador’s predecessor. But the deposit extended into a neighboring block belonging to state-run Pemex, which kicked off a series of contentious negotiations over how to divide the oil and who would run the operations.
“It looks like an agreement is being reached. I myself told the company’s manager that their investments are guaranteed,” Lopez Obrador said.