Photo: Eni

PULSE NEWS MEXICO

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his band of myopic disciples may have been celebrating the anniversary of the country’s 1938 oil expropriation (which ousted all foreign interests and proclaimed Mexico’s fossil fuel reserves as an untouchable national treasure) in his massive AMLO fest on Saturday, March 18, but it was an Italian company that may have come to the rescue of the state-run Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) one day earlier with the discovery of a new deposit of up to 200 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Italian company Eni announced the discovery Friday by its Yatzil-1, approximately 65 kilometers from the coast.

“The well was drilled by the Valaris DPS5 Semisub rig in a water depth of 284 meters and reached a total depth of 2,441 meters,” Eni explained in a statement.

“Yatzil-1 EXP encountered more than 40 meters of net pay sands with good quality oil in the Upper Miocene sequences with excellent petrophysical properties confirmed by extensive subsurface data collection.”

The statement went on to say that “this confirms the value of Eni’s portfolio of Mexican assets, contributing to the potential development of a synergistic group of various prospects located nearby.”

The Joint Venture of Block 7 is made up of Eni, with a 45-percent share, with Mexico’s Capricornio, with 30 percent, and Citla Energy, with 25 percent.

Eni has been present in Mexico since 2006 and established its wholly owned subsidiary Eni México in 2015.

Eni currently has rights to eight exploration and production blocks (six as operator), all located in the southeast basin in the Gulf of Mexico.