Output from Mexico’s biggest oil field, Cantarell, will decline 14 per cent a year from 2006, state oil monopoly Pemex said.

Luis Ramirez, head of exploration and production at Pemex, said during the inauguration of two new gas installations at Cantarell that the exploration of deep-sea reserves in the Gulf of Mexico was vital for the future.
Thanks to higher investments under President Vicente Fox, Pemex has cranked up output at Cantarell, Ramirez said, and “pushed back the decline which would have taken place in 2003 until 2006, when Cantarell will begin to decline significantly, at a rate of 14 percent annually.”
Output from Cantarell, where the discovery of vast oil reserves in the 1970s gave Mexico a big economic boost, is now 2.2 million barrels per day, up from 2.0 million barrels per day, Ramirez said.
Pemex, under pressure to find new reserves as existing fields mature, has been using nitrogen-injection techniques at Cantarell to raise underground pressure and squeeze out more oil.