Mexico reveals deep-water oil find

Mexico’s state-owned oil company has made its first large-scale discovery of deep-water oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, President Felipe Calderon said today.

Mr Calderon said Pemex drilled a three-mile (5,000m) exploratory well and now hopes to verify the existence of 250 million to 400 million barrels of light oil in the area known as Perdido.

The field is about 24 miles (39km) from US waters.

Mr Calderon said a deposit of that size would be equal to a third of Pemex’s annual petroleum production.