Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim's company, Grupo Carso SAB, announced this week that it was investing $1.2 billion to develop a vast gas field in the Gulf of Mexico, expected to be produced by 2026.
Bloomberg reported that Carso signed a deal with Mexico's state-run Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to explore and extract from the Lakach deepwater field, discovered 2007 about 98 kilometers southeast of Veracruz.
Under the deal, Pemex would keep ownership of the field and its reserves, while Carso would build a facility to store and process the gas and other by-products.
In addition, Carso would collaborate with Houston-based Talos Energy and the Mexican operations of Spanish company Grupo FCC to develop Lakach. Slim owns stakes in both firms.
Carso shares dropped 2.8% to MXN 127.86 ($7.06) before the Lakach deal with Pemex.
The Financial Times added that Slim took a 3% stake in British telecom BT.
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Carso-Pemex Deal
It is understood that the deal between Carso and Pemex would be one of the final successful for outgoing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and one of the first to be handled by President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum.
Slim also won the deal after Pemex scrapped a similar agreement with New Fortress Energy to develop the oil field. Lopez Obrador also praised a Carso deal to acquire stakes in two other oil fields as the venture would stay "in the hands of Mexicans."
On the other hand, Sheinbaum, a climate scientist who would become the country's first female president and the first person of Jewish heritage to hold office in a majority Catholic country later this year, previously said that she would work with private investors to gradually transition into green energy while insisting, just like her predecessor, that Mexico's natural resources belong to the people.
Meanwhile, Slim also said earlier this week that Mexico needed to invest in energy to take advantage of the trade tensions between its northern neighbor, the United States, and China.
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