Offshore Beyond 2025: Partnerships Shaping Mexico’s Future

Mexico’s offshore oil and gas services ecosystem is recalibrating for the post 2025 Energy Reform landscape under tighter cash cycles, higher operating costs, and ambitious production targets. A new cycle for the country’s oil and gas industry is happening in practice, shifting capital models to ride out payment uncertainty, accelerating technology adoption where it truly lifts recovery in complex geology, deploying autonomous capabilities to de-risk tasks offshore, and reinventing logistics to keep schedules intact despite supply chain friction.

“The industry shares a common objective, and it is evident that collaborative efforts are far more effective than working independently. Moreover, there should be tangible benefits for all participants,” says César Vera, Director, Global Reach and Strategy, Fueltrax.

The financial backdrop is decisive. Payment delays and reduced activity tied to Mexico’s production decline have forced service providers to rework capital exposure and cash conversion. Halliburton recently flagged international revenue pressure linked in part to lower activity in Mexico, and noted that unresolved supplier payment timing has curtailed operations even as decline rates heighten the need for service reactivation. 

“The lack of payments causes capital to shift somewhat away from the country, and companies prefer to invest in emerging markets that compete with Mexico,” says Anouar Fraija, Vice President and Managing Director, Halliburton.

Mexico’s crude and condensate output fell to roughly 1.64MMb/d in May, sharpening the tension between production goals and working capital realities for the supply chain. In this setting, providers have leaned toward performance-based milestones, shared-risk frameworks, and financing structures that phase cash calls with verified field results, rather than front-loaded CAPEX cycles. These practices are increasingly common in shallow-water work, where decline management is critical, and in deepwater projects that demand multi-year visibility.

Despite the stress, Mexico is still advancing material offshore programs that anchor demand and justify long-dated investments. Woodside’s Trion development in the Perdido area selected SBM Offshore to deliver and lease a floating storage and offloading unit for 20 years, a signal that deepwater infrastructure will remain part of the mix through the 2030s even as shallow-water decline mitigation continues. The NOC has also pursued new appraisal and exploration in Perdido and has approved spending to lift output from mature offshore fields such as Bacab, reinforcing a two-track opportunity set for contractors that can bridge brownfield debottlenecking and greenfield execution.

Within this environment, companies represent complementary levers for uptime and total-system efficiency. Fueltrax, focused on smart fuel management across offshore support fleets, brings a data-centric approach that cuts consumption and emissions while sharpening cost control at the exact moment vessel day rates, bunkering costs, and port congestion squeeze budgets. In Mexico, the company has emphasized fuel optimization as a direct lever to lower logistics costs across offshore and onshore movement, with metering that extends to multiple fluids and provides traceable quality and volume assurance. Reducing fuel variance and idling time with vessel-level telemetry can free 5-10% cost on logistics legs that repeatedly drive critical path delays, especially during seasonal weather windows, says Vera.

Grupo Protexa exemplifies the domestic backbone of installation and construction capacity. The company’s energy division highlights a decades-long track record laying subsea pipelines and installing platforms in the Campeche Sound, and has recently mobilized dynamic-positioning class vessels for multi-platform shallow-water EPCI scopes. That blend of local content, heavy marine assets, and shallow-water execution discipline is what PEMEX and private operators need for fast-cycle tie-backs, lightweight topsides, and routine integrity campaigns that sustain plateau targets without the schedule risk of oversized projects. 

“We have to be creative in how we finance projects. That way, clients can move forward without immediate payments, and operations in Mexico do not stop,” says Sergio Charles , Energy Director, Grupo Protexa.

On the technology front, the question is no longer whether to adopt digital and autonomous systems, but where to create the largest lift in Mexico’s specific geology and operations. “In offshore operations, we focus on technology and on producing energy as efficiently and reliably as possible. We always look for the best technology, and if we do not have it, we find it,” says Mariano Souto, General Manager, Aggreko.

Large international integrators like Halliburton continue to push real-time drilling analytics, predictive maintenance, and subsurface imaging tuned to carbonate and faulted plays common offshore Mexico. Meanwhile, autonomous subsea robotics are crossing the threshold from trials to commercial activity in the broader Gulf of Mexico. Tether-less resident systems have executed survey scopes for international operators, demonstrating fewer weather aborts, faster mobilization, and reduced exposure hours for personnel. For Mexico, translating these gains to routine inspection, pipeline route surveys, and light intervention can compress campaign durations, clear backlogs, and lower life-of-field OPEX. The global offshore Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) market’s projected growth underscores how these capabilities are shifting from specialist to standard across brownfield and greenfield phases.

SBM Offshore’s role at Trion also signals a second digital and autonomous horizon: floating production and storage assets as data platforms. Long-term lease models create alignment for condition-based maintenance, production optimization, and energy management at the asset level. When combined with AI-assisted emissions and power management tools proven in other basins, operators can balance throughput against energy intensity while service providers capture value through availability guarantees. 

Logistics is the day-to-day determinant of schedule in the Bay of Campeche and Perdido. Vessel scarcity, weather, and parts lead times amplify small planning errors into multi-day slips. Here, the combination of granular fuel and route analytics, predictive inventory for critical spares, and tighter port call orchestration is paying off. Mexico’s offshore support vessel market is growing from a base near US$700 million in 2024, and that growth will reward operators who adopt telemetry-driven dispatch, just-in-time bunkering, and prioritized berth windows linked to live project controls. 

“We have to transform the way we operate to continue in Mexico, such as working with Mexican companies to gain access to local suppliers, comply with local regulations, and leverage their local expertise,” says Luis Navarro, Country Manager Mexico, Heerema Marine Contractors.

The macro picture supports this pivot to efficiency. Market analysts project moderate growth in Mexico’s oil and gas sector through the next decade, with offshore still representing most reserves and resources. If Mexico’s newly signaled willingness to use additional recovery techniques in complex plays translates into balanced approvals and timely contracting, service intensity will rise in both brownfield and deepwater segments.