Cantarell
Coordinates: 19 ° 45 ′ 9 ″ N , 92 ° 30 ′ 58 ″ W.
Cantarell is an offshore oil field of the 'aging Supergiant' type and is located about 100 km off the Gulf of Mexico in the Bay of Campeche . It has a volume (oil in place) of around 35 billion barrels of crude oil, about half of which was estimated to be recoverable. For a long time it was the largest oil field in Mexico and, until 2007, the second most productive oil field in the world. At the same time, it is one of the largest offshore production areas in the world with an investment volume of approx. 5 billion US dollars. Cantarell is exploited by the state oil company PEMEX . Around 40% of the Mexican national budget was generated in 2007 with the proceeds from the oil field.
history
The first geophysical investigations began in 1972 after the fisherman Rudesindo Cantarell discovered a dark oil stain in the Bay of Campeche and told a PEMEX oil engineer. The oil deposit under the ocean floor was discovered in 1976. The field consists of the Akal, Chac, Ixtoc, Kambesah, Kutz, Nohoch, Sihil and Takin deposits, which extend over an area of approximately 300 km².
Production began in 1979 and in 1981 Cantarell was producing 1.16 million barrels of oil a day. By 1995 production had dropped to 1 million barrels / day. Since 2000, large amounts of nitrogen have been pumped in to raise the pressure in the field and secure the flow of oil. As a result, production rose to 1.9 million barrels / day in 2002 and as much as 2.1 million barrels / day were produced in 2004, making it the second most productive field after Ghawar in Saudi Arabia . In 2004, however, it had reached its maximum funding. Since then, production has been in decline - a fact that is often used to illustrate the peak oil phenomenon, according to which the world has reached the apex of the oil age as the large oil fields gradually dry up.
Cantarell, in the background the Yucatan coast
Cantarell funding platforms
"Close" picture of the infrastructure
Post Peak
| year | Funding in kbpd |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 2122.8 |
| 2004 | 2136.4 |
| 2005 | 2035.3 |
| 2006 | 1800.9 |
| 2007 | 1490.5 |
| 2008 | 1039.5 |
| 2009 | 684.8 |
| 2010 | 558.0 |
| 2011 | 500.7 |
| 2012 | 454.1 |
| 2013 | 439.8 |
| 2014 | 374.9 |
| 2015 | 273.4 |
| 2016 | 215.8 |
| 2017 | 176.0 |
| 2018 | 161.2 |
In 2005, Cantarell's delivery rate was 2.032 Mb / day; in 2006, the delivery rate then dropped unexpectedly by 13.1%. In July 2008, the output dropped dramatically by 36% to just 973,668 barrels / day (0.973Mb / day) compared to 1.526 Mb / day in the same period in 2007. According to experts, the massive and unusually rapid drop in output is due to the pumping in of nitrogen and other methods that have been used since 1997. As a result of the decline in production, the neighboring Ku-Maloob-Zaap oil field, which was connected to the Cantarell infrastructure, became the most productive oil field in Mexico.
Originally it was expected that the production capacity would stabilize at 500,000 barrels / day, however the production volume fell to around 464,000 barrels / day by November 2010. In August 2011, only 449,000 barrels / day were produced, so a longer-term "stabilization" at a higher level seems rather unlikely. In November 2011 production fell to 400,587 barrels / day, the average output in 2014 was only 375 kBbl / day. In July 2014, PEMEX presented the plan to invest a total of 6 billion US dollars by 2017 to stabilize production at 325 kBbl / day. With the change of laws in Mexico one hopes for foreign investment and know-how for the field. In 2015 the production capacity fell to only 273 thousand barrels per day and in 2018 it was only 161 kbpd.
Due to the falling production yield, PEMEX assumed that the reserves would dry up by 2014 in 2007. Similar to other oil fields, however, in the case of Cantarell, new investments and technological advances prevented this linear extrapolation from becoming a reality.
Web links
- Entry at offshore-technology.com
- Potential Impact of Cantarell's Decline on Mexico's Oil Production , July 14, 2006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Xiaobing Li; Michael Molina: Oil: a cultural and geographic encyclopedia of black gold . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA 2014, ISBN 978-1-61069-271-7 , pp. 37 ( text in Google Book search).
- ↑ Jan Martínez Ahrens: The Mexican oil treasure found by a fisherman. El País, June 29, 2015, accessed December 9, 2019 .
- ↑ PEMEX: Annual Report 2018 (SEC Form 20-F), p. 37
- ↑ World's largest N2-generation plant starts up for Cantarell reservoir pressure maintenance. In: OGJ.com. Oil & Gas Journal, March 21, 2001, accessed December 9, 2019 .
- ↑ Kevin Watts: Nitrogen Injection Increases Recovery in the Cantarell Field. In: Upstream Pumping. Cahaba Media Group, August 15, 2015, accessed December 9, 2019 .
- ↑ Scott Weeden: Meteoric History Of Cantarell Field Continues For Pemex. Hartenergy, May 1, 2015, accessed December 9, 2019 .
- ↑ Sam Foucher: An Update on Mexico's Oil Production - The Rapid Collapse of Cantarell by the Numbers. In: The Oil Drum. January 7, 2007, accessed December 9, 2019 .
- ↑ Data according to the Annual Reports, SEC Form 20-F, see PEMEX SEC Filings
- ↑ Mexico's Pemex August 1-14 Crude Output
- ^ Cantarell Field History
- ↑ Vanessa Julia Ramírez Inches: Annual Report, Form 20-F. In: SEC filing. PEMEX, April 30, 2019, p. 32 , accessed December 9, 2019 .
- ↑ Mexican Company Predicts End of Oil. July 27, 2007, accessed July 5, 2017 .