Mexico’s state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, wants more capital expenditure money for 2012 as it seeks to control declining production at offshore deposits, squeeze more crude out of new and mature onshore fields, and move forward with plans to dip into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico despite the BP oil spill, officials said Friday.

While Pemex’s investment budget for exploration, production and processing plants for next year is still being negotiated, it should be similar to what the company expects to spend this year, said Chief Financial Officer Carlos Trevino during a conference call with analysts on second-quarter results.

“We could expect a little bit less than 250 billion pesos ($19.8 billion) for the next year,” he said, adding “it’s too soon to have a better projection.”

For 2012, however, Pemex is in discussions with the Finance Ministry to review how the company’s earnings are distributed, as well as to meet new efficiency goals so that the oil firm will have a capital expenditure budget of “something like 300 billion pesos,” or about $23.7 billion at the current exchange rate.

Pemex’s investment funds have been rising steadily over the last several years, doubling in dollar terms since 2003 when the company neared its peak oil output.

Its supergiant offshore field Cantarell started declining in 2005, and crude output has fallen from an average of 3.4 million barrels a day in 2004 to about 2.6 million barrels a day over the last 18 months.

On the production side, which has concerned debt ratings agencies since Pemex supplies a significant chunk of the federal budget, Pemex’s director of exploration and production, Carlos Morales, said that its top producing field, Ku-Maloob-Zaap, has reached its expected peak production of 850,000 barrels a day.