Rodney lewis has drilled eight wells in north-ern Mexico. Five found natural gas. One unexpectedly hit high-quality light crude oil, enough to produce 100 barrels a day. When he relayed the news to state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, for which he's drilling the wells, Pemex bureaucrats told him his contract was to find natural gas, not oil, and ordered him to plug that well. Had he been exploring just a few miles north, on his acreage in south Texas, "I'd be producing it right now."rnLewis is the first U.S. wildcatter to drill in Mexico in three decades and one of only a handful allowed in since President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized its oil industry 70 years ago, booting out Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell. Oil is a touchy issue in Mexico, whose constitution bars ownership by anyone but the state of even a molecule of its 30 billion barrels of probable hydrocarbon reserves. That's stricter by far than Venezuela, Iran or even Cuba.
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