Mexico - Cantarell crashing

Bandidoz · Post by **Bandidoz** » 01 Feb 2007, 18:33

Yeah, like "U-Fit" - "Armstrong Industries"

(trying to sell conservatories in Mid/Southern France, with f**king air conditioners, and not understanding a word of French)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armstrongs

I'm still unsure as to whether they're real or a spoof.

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 01 Feb 2007, 19:02

"BAE Systems, formed from the merger of British Aerospace and the weapons businesses of GEC, is the country's largest manufacturing company and its largest industrial exporter with more than 90,000 staff around the world". (Pasted from a BBC News article)

I suspect that this firm has diminishing prospects in aircraft manufacturing. Its current product lines are getting long in the tooth - the Hawk has been around since the early 70s and is nearing the end of its long production run. The Harrier and Tornado are no longer in production, though have 10 years or so service life left. The Typhoon may have more of a future, but it's wildly complex and expensive and thus doesn't have the export volume potential of simpler combat aircraft like the Hawk. The civil aviation side (small bizjets and Airbus wings) either have already been or will be sold off, maybe the BAES Board heard about Peak Oil and long term returns on airliner products!

Looking beyond today, there is the modest UK share of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter 'Lightniing II' (predominantly a US product, lately beset by technology transfer disputes with our US 'partners') and maybe some home-grown sinister UAVs (pilotless drones) and UCAVs (pilotless jet fighters) as a future product base - the last manufacturing remnants of a once massive British aviation industry. And to think BAES are our largest manufacturing company...

Planespotting will be challenging in a PO world - wot no airshows!

Mean Mr Mustard · Post by **Mean Mr Mustard** » 01 Feb 2007, 19:09

Just noticed the topic drift here - but continuing on a military aviation note, as I posted elsewhere recently, the Mexicans are buying sophisticated Sukhoi 30 fighters to protect their offshore rigs. Maybe they won't need to bother now...

There. That gets us back to Canterell.

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 01 Feb 2007, 19:15

Mean Mr Mustard wrote:Just noticed the topic drift here - but continuing on a military aviation note, as I posted elsewhere recently, the Mexicans are buying sophisticated Sukhoi 30 fighters to protect their offshore rigs. Maybe they won't need to bother now...

There. That gets us back to Canterell.

Perhaps they'll need the Sukhoi's to protect their corn crops.

Erik · Post by **Erik** » 24 May 2008, 10:24

Mean Mr Mustard wrote:There. That gets us back to Canterell.

Pemex Says April Oil Output Drop Biggest in 12 Years

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, said April crude production fell the most in more than 12 years as output at its largest field declined faster than the company forecast.

Crude oil production fell 13 percent to 2.767 million barrels a day in April, Mexico City-based Pemex, as the company is known, said today on its Web site. Output a year earlier was 3.182 million barrels a day. The decline was the largest since October 1995, when output fell 29 percent.

"There is no clear sign that this decline is going to slow down,'' said David Shields, an independent energy analyst in Mexico City. "I don't think there is any point in trying to forecast an annual average.''

Mexico's Congress must pass a bill that would give Pemex more freedom to hire foreign and private companies to explore, produce, refine and transport oil, President Felipe Calderon said this week. The changes would give Pemex more cash to explore and produce oil to staunch the decline.

Output at Cantarell, Pemex's biggest field, fell 33 percent to 1.07 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Ministry. That was the lowest output since March 1996 at the field, which peaked at 2.192 million barrels a day in December 2003 and once accounted for about 60 percent of the company's output.

The company forecast output at Cantarell would fall 15 percent annually until 2012.

Whenever I've mentioned this to oil industry "insiders" (or near enough) they always argue that the PEMX/Cantarell problem is not geological but due to lack of foreign investment, and this article suggests the same. I don't share their view of course, but I wonder to what extent the decline in Cantarell could be slowed by such "foreign" investment? Also, could the high decline rate in Cantarell be a good thing in the long term, meaning the oil will last longer for the Mexicans rather than being extracted more quickly (by and for foreign investors)? Or does it mean the oil in the ground will never be recoverable if the field declines so rapidly and perhaps uncontrollably?

Questions, questions... bah, who cares?! Jeees, I need to go out and tend to my kiwi plants and potato-in-bucket crops instead of thinking about all this stuff on a Saturday morning