On Kessel's Declaration

Three million bpd in 2015? Schettino doesn't buy it:

...the declaration of Secretary Kessel is surprising, as it says that in a pair of years production will recover, and we will return to 3 million bpd in 2015. According to the secretary, this is going to happen thanks to Chicontepec. The truth, I don't think that's going to happen, for reasons that we've already covered in this column in regard to that mythical field that has been used as an excuse before the debacle of the oil reform. Chicontepec is never going to replace Cantarell, simply because it requires 200 times more wells to do so, and because it would require that Mexico construct five times more wells than it has in its entire history. That's not going to happen, especially if the news reported in these pages yesterday by Noé Cruz Serrano is correct: Pemex is going to have to postpone investments in that field because of cash flow problems.

Denying reality is silliness. There's no other label for it.