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How many Mexicans does it take to drill an oil well?
More than 140,000, and even then they're not very good at it. For this, now acute, problem, blame the politicians

IT IS bad enough that Mexico's economy is in deep recession, triggered by its close links to the ailing United States. To make matters worse, the country's oil industry, its fiscal cash-cow for the past three decades, is declining swiftly. As recently as 2004 Cantarell, the country's main offshore field, produced 2.1m barrels per day (b/d) of crude. Now its output is just 600,000 b/d. There are no obvious replacements: 23 of the 32 biggest fields are in decline. Barring big new finds, the world's seventh-largest oil producer is forecast to become a net importer by 2017.
That's not good for us ...
The Mexican treasury is ill-prepared for this. Taxes and royalties from Pemex, the state-owned oil monopoly, have accounted for almost two-fifths of federal revenues in recent years, compensating for one of Latin America's weakest tax regimes (which collects just 11% of GDP). If oil output drops below 2m b/d, as many industry-watchers fear, the government would be forced to cut spending by more than 10%--or jack up taxes correspondingly, to avoid an unsustainable budget deficit. This might threaten economic recovery.

Posted by: Steve White 2009-10-06
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=280401