QGEP Seeks Stronger Brazil Presence, Guardado Says

Global oil majors from Exxon Mobil Corp. to Chevron Corp. are about to get the clearest indication yet of how far Mexican lawmakers will go to lure them into the largest unexplored crude area after the Arctic Circle.

Of this, there is no debate: The future of Mexico’s oil industry lies offshore, where billions of barrels of crude are locked under the sea floor in the Gulf of Mexico. The country’s deepwater frontier is promising, but successfully extracting offshore oil is expensive and technically difficult, and Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil monopoly known as Pemex, doesn’t have the financial resources to singlehandedly exploit the Gulf’s ample resources. So they’re going to bring in outside help.

Encana Corp, Canada’s largest natural gas producer, said it would boost liquids production by 30% in 2014 as part of new Chief Executive Doug Suttles’ plan to focus spending on regions rich in gas liquids and oil. The company will focus three-quarters of its planned 2014 capital spending of $2.4-billion to $2.5-billion on five shale regions in western Canada and the U.S. south and southwest.