Mexico oil drilling

U.S. Government Loaned Mexican Government More Than $1 Billion to Drill Oil in Gulf of Mexico Last Year; Has $1 Billion More Planned For This Year

CNS News:


Wednesday, September 08, 2010
By Matt Cover, Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent federal agency, loaned more than $1 billion to the Mexican state oil company PEMEX in 2009 to support the company’s oil drilling in the southern Gulf of Mexico. The bank has another $1 billion in loans in the pipeline for 2010, unless Congress objects…
PEMEX was the Export-Import Bank’s largest borrower in 2009 and has borrowed $8.3 billion from the U.S. federal government since 1998. Under the 2009 loan agreements, PEMEX agreed to contract with American firms and purchase equipment from American manufacturers in exchange for the money.
One loan, worth $600 million, went to finance the development of 18 oil and natural gas fields in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico. Campeche is the area where the majority of Mexico’s oil and gas production takes place and is located just north of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Another loan, worth $300 million, went to fund the building of oil production facilities in Mexico’s Cantarell offshore oil field, which provides a large portion of Mexico’s oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).
The $900 million in combined loans occurred in April of 2009.
Another $150 million in Export-Import Bank loans was made in May of 2009 to support PEMEX’s Strategic Gas Program, including natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico…
Petroleum products, oil and natural gas, are Mexico’s largest exports, accounting for 40 percent of government revenues and 15 percent of GDP. Mexico is one of the largest oil exporters in the world and PEMEX is one of the world’s largest petrochemical corporations.
So clearly they need all the help they can get from the US taxpayer.

The Export-Import Bank also has approximately $1 billion in loans to PEMEX scheduled for fiscal year 2010. The loans, which are currently awaiting congressional approval, would fund four projects that, like the 2009 loans, would result in PEMEX employing U.S. oil contractors and engineers for both on-shore and off-shore oil production.
The Bank’s activities are not affected by the Obama administration’s ban on offshore drilling because that ban applies only to deepwater drilling–drilling in 500 meters of water or deeper–and the PEMEX projects financed by the Ex-Im Bank are shallow-water projects…

Oh, well. Why not?
Everything is permissible – just as long as it does not directly benefit the interest of the United States.