Grupo Carso to develop US$1.2bn Lakach gas field for Pemex

Grupo Carso, the conglomerate controlled by Mexican business mogul Carlos Slim, said late Friday it will invest US$1.2bn to develop the Lakach gas field in the Gulf of Mexico.

Located 98km off the city of Veracruz, the Lakach field was discovered in 2007 and is owned by Pemex, Mexico's national oil company.

In a filing with the local stock market, Grupo Carso said it had signed an exploration and extraction services contract (CSIEE) with Pemex to develop the field.

It will begin selling the gas from Lakach in about two and a half years, the company said.

Following a brief period in which the country allowed international companies to bid for oil and gas fields, Mexico cancelled subsequent bid rounds. Pemex now uses contracts with service providers like Grupo Carso to develop oil and gas discoveries.

Efforts to produce gas from the Lakach field have been beset by difficulties. 

In 2022, US company New Fortress Energy (NFE) signed an agreement with Pemex to develop the field. NFE later pulled out of the deal, reportedly because of rising development costs and a dispute over the price at which Pemex would sell gas from Lakach to NFE to liquefy and export.

In contrast to NFE's plan to export LNG, Grupo Carso said that all the gas produced from Lakach will be processed onshore at a plant the company will build.

Lakach is one of the largest gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico and is in deep waters of 900m to 1,200m. Industry observers have said it will be difficult to produce gas from Lakach at prices that are competitive with gas from the shale fields of the US.

Outgoing Mexican President Andrés López Obrador has prioritized the country's energy sovereignty and has said that developing Lakach is a matter of national interest.

While Carso did not provide any production forecasts, NFE and Pemex said in their development plan that Lakach would operate for about 10 years.

Carso's development partners for Lakach will be Spanish construction company FCC and US oil and gas firm Talos Energy. Slim is a shareholder in both companies.