Mexico’s state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) expects production at its Chicontepec field to rise to 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2009, a Pemex official said Wednesday.
“It will be close to 40 (thousand bpd) by the end of this year,” Jesus Puente Trevino, advisor to the general director of Pemex, told reporters on the sidelines of Deloitte’s 2009 Oil & Gas Conference.
Chicontepec, which was producing 29,000 bpd in September, is a focus of long-term Pemex efforts to increase production as major fields including Cantarell decline.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon nominated Carstens as New Finance Minister for Mexico
Mexican President Felipe Calderon nominated Carstens as the country’s central bank governor, replacing Guillermo Ortiz, whose second six-year term expires at the end of the year.
The outgoing Ortiz clashed with Calderon last year for keeping interest rates higher than the government wanted as Mexico sank into recession. Analysts said Carstens was a well-respected professional who would not cave to political pressure. “This guy is very responsible, and he is a very competent technocrat. Even if he was dovish in his work at the Finance Ministry, that does not mean he will be dovish at the central bank,” said a strategist in Mexico City.
Mexican banks will likely grow lending at a faster rate than the economy next year as Mexico bounces back from its worst recession since the 1995 peso crisis, according to a top industry executive.
“We estimate that credit will grow at a rate superior to that of the overall economy, but not reaching the level it had between 2006 and 2008,” – Enrique Zorrilla, chief executive of Citigroup Inc. (C) unit Banamex, said at a press conference Tuesday.
Zorrilla said commercial and mortgage lending should post the strongest growth in 2010, while consumer lending will expand at a much more modest pace.
The Bank of Mexico has forecast an expansion in gross domestic product of 2.5% to 3.5% in 2010, after contracting an estimated 7% this year due to a recession in the U.S. that hit Mexico’s export focused industrial sector.
Mexico’s banks reported 1.889 trillion pesos ($145.5 billion) of loans on their books at the end of October, nearly unchanged from a year-ago, as a drop in consumer loans offset growth in commercial loans and mortgages.
Banks have restricted consumer loans, especially credit cards, as rising unemployment and poor lending standards earlier in the decade triggered a surge in defaults.
Marriott International said Monday it will triple the number of hotels it has in Mexico over the next decade as the Bethesda hotelier seeks to exploit demand in developing countries, where access to capital can be easier than in the United States
The deal with Pulso Hotelero to open 36 moderate-priced Fairfield Inns starting in 2011 will increase the number of Marriott hotels in Mexico from 19 to 57 across five of its brands.
Three men with links to a Canadian mining company have been charged in the killing of a Mexican activist, threatening already strained relations between the countries on the eve of a visit to the same region by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean.
- [theglobeandmail.com]
Mexico spent $1.172 billion to buy oil hedges for 2010, covering a possible revenue shortfall if production falls for the sixth straight year and prices don’t recover from about a five-year low.
Mexico purchased put options that give it the option, not the obligation, to sell its oil for $57 a barrel next year, the Finance Ministry said in an e-mail statement today.
“We want this as an insurance policy,” Finance Minister Agustin Carstens said in New York today. “If we don’t collect any resources from this transaction it’s OK because that means oil would have been above $57 a barrel.” – bloomberg.com
Esparza was killed shortly after he was named police chief in the Monterrey suburb of Garcia. Five Garcia police officers were among 10 people arrested in Esparza’s killing.
Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandra Garza y Garza said in Monterrey that a second shootout that left five people dead ensued when gunmen in at least 10 Sport Utility Vehicles heading to the villa, presumably to rescue those detained, ran into a military convoy.
Seven people were arrested during the second clash, Garza y Garza said.
Johnny Depp and Salma Hayek are to star in Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s biopic about Mexican revolutionary hero Pancho Villa.
Depp will act in Spanish in the Spanish-language feature that will be shot partly in Mexico, where Villa – an early 20th-century bandit who became a guerrilla fighter and a hero to the poor – is an iconic historical figure.
Mexico’s antitrust watchdog is fining media giant Televisa almost $4 million for refusing to let a cable operator transmit its channels, the latest in a push to boost competition in the sector.
The Federal Competition Commission decided at a meeting last month to fine Televisa, which controls cable operator Cablevision (CABLECPO.MX)
