Oil Discoveries Suggest Mexico’s Bet to Open Energy Sector Is Paying Off<br />But after drilling, he said, “we found that even our bullish expectations were conservative, and we have something much more interesting.”<br />Because of Mexico’s rich resources and proximity to the United States, Mr. Marti continued, “we think<br />that over the next few decades, Mexico is going to be a very important source of growth in the oil and gas sector.”<br />Also on Tuesday, Eni, an Italian oil company, said a well recently drilled to test a previously announced discovery had shown<br />that the trove also held more than one billion barrels of oil — much more than previously thought.<br />The consortium, made up of Premier Oil of Britain, as well as Talos Energy of Texas and the Mexican company Sierra Oil and Gas, said<br />that it had discovered a field containing more than one billion barrels of oil in shallow water 40 miles off the Mexican coast.<br />On Tuesday, an international consortium of energy companies said they had discovered a large oil field,<br />and another firm said it had discovered more oil than expected in a separate area.<br />Riverstone Holdings, an American private equity firm<br />that specializes in energy investments, owns 45 percent of Talos Energy and 43 percent of Sierra Oil and Gas.<br />In an interview, Alfredo A. Marti, a former BP executive who is now a Riverstone managing director, said<br />that high-tech data processing indicated that the Mexican government’s estimates for the amount of oil in the field might have been too low.
