KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 29): National oil firm Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) and its joint venture (JV) partner Colombia's Ecopetrol Global have signed exploration and extraction contracts from Mexico’s June shallow water Round 2.1 bidding.

The Petronas-Ecopetrol JV had won Area 6 with a state participation of 65.19%, an additional investment factor of 1%, and an economic proposal of 71.178%.

Area 6 is 559sq km, at 30-80m water depth, consisting of light oil.

Energy portal Offshore Engineer (Oedigital) reported on Sept 25 that Mexico had signed 10 exploration and extraction contracts with bid round winners from this June's shallow water Round 2.1, which includes the Petronas-Ecopetrol JV.

Oedigital quoted Mexico's Minister of Energy Pedro Joaquín Coldwell as saying that Mexico expects investments from these 10 shallow water blocks to total approximately US$8 billion, and produce a maximum of 170,000 boe/d.

Meanwhile, the Centro Nacional de Hidrocarburos (CNH) also announced the results of Mexico’s 5th, 6th and 7th Oil & Gas exploration Rounds since the reform of the country’s hydrocarbons industry.

Oedigital said the Rounds generated a high level of interest from national and international companies of varying sizes.

It said the CNH fine-tuned the contracts on offer for the second group of bidding Rounds and implemented some of the lessons learned from Rounds 1.1 – 1.4.

This attracted a large number of competitive bids, particularly in Round 2.1. As a result, the majority of areas on offer were awarded.

Competition in all three Rounds was fierce, with multimillion-dollar award bonuses offered by bidders to fend off the competition for the most desirable blocks.

Rounds 2.2 and 2.3 are expected bring a total investment of around US$2bn into Mexico.