(Bloomberg) – Carlos Slim’s foray into Mexico’s offshore oil market shows no signs of abating, with the Mexican media magnate’s now planning to spend $270 million on the remaining shares of oil fields off the coast of Campeche.
Grupo Carso SAB, Slim’s company, said in statement Monday that it will purchase Fieldwood Mexico from Russia’s Lukoil, giving it the remaining 50% stake in the Ichalkil and Pokoch fields. In 2023, Slim acquired a 50% stake in the fields through the acquisition of PetroBal SAPI.
Such moves are quickly transforming Mexico’s most famous media magnate into its biggest private oil baron. Including the latest deal with Lukoil, Slim has spent more than $2.4 billion on offshore oil assets in Mexico. He’s also inherited seasoned personnel through his acquisitions of PetroBal and Houston-based Talos Energy Inc., where Slim controls some 80% of the company’s Mexican unit, giving him a significant stake in the giant Zama oil field.
While state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, grapples with ballooning debt, a decades-long slide in oil production and money-losing refineries, Slim is quietly becoming its biggest private sector partner.
In addition to his private sector deals, Slim’s partnered with Pemex to develop the deepwater Lakach gas project and he signed a $2 billion agreement with Pemex to drill wells in the gas field Ixachi.
Pemex remains stuck in a vicious cycle of paying off interest on its soaring debt instead of investing in expanding oil production and improving efficiency at its unprofitable refineries. The state oil firm has even been forced to cede operators at Zama to its partner Harbour Energy at the end of last year, after a years-long battle to wrest control of the megafield from Talos. It remains to be seen whether Slim’s deep pockets can help Pemex turn around its performance.
Pictured above: Carlos Slim has become a key private-sector player in Mexico’s offshore oil sector through his majority control of Talos Energy’s Mexican unit, giving him a significant stake in the Zama oil field—one of the country’s largest offshore discoveries in decades, developed in partnership with Pemex.
