Mexico to Team Up with Firms for Deep Water Oil

In a historic first, Mexico's struggling state-run Pemex energy company will team up with private firms for a deep-water oil project, officials said Friday.

Pemex will "farm out" the $11 billion Trion field in the Gulf of Mexico, which has potentially 480 million barrels of light crude, said company director general Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya.

"For the first time in its history, Pemex won't assume the geological and financial risks alone," Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said at a news conference.

President Enrique Pena Nieto pushed through a landmark reform in 2014 that ended Pemex's seven-decade monopoly, reopening the oil and gas sector to private investors.

One of the goals was to allow Pemex to join forces with other companies.

Pemex posted $30.3 billion in losses in 2015 while production has dropped from 3.4 million barrels per day to 2.27 million in 2015.

The company is making $5.5 billion in budget cuts this year, with delays in investments representing $3.6 billion of those savings.

The government is providing $4.2 billion in liquidity to help Pemex.