PEMEX Output Down 7.8% July YOY; Cantarell @ 23% Of Total - Lowest % Since Monthly Reports Began

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, said oil output in July fell 7.8 percent to 2.561 million barrels a day as production from its Cantarell field kept sinking.

A year earlier, daily production was 2.778 million barrels, Mexico City-based Pemex, as the company is known, said today on its Web site. Natural-gas output rose 2.2 percent to 7.1 billion cubic feet a day.

Pemex plans to spend a record $19.5 billion this year to discover deposits and develop wells to help offset the fastest drop in output since 1942. Production has fallen every month on a year-over-year basis since July 2006, according to Bloomberg and Pemex records.

Next month, the company expects production at its Chicontepec field to jump by about a third to 40,000 barrels a day. The company pumped 32,405 barrels a day from Chicontepec and 588,210 barrels a day from Cantarell in July, according to data published by the Energy Ministry today. Cantarell accounted for 23 percent of total output, the lowest level since Pemex began publishing monthly records for the field in 1990.

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