The Power of Synergy through Partnership

CBM and Ainda Consultores have been partners for a long time, a success story forged on a solid repartition of tasks. The synergy brings together Ainda’s financial and strategic approach and CBM’s focus on technical and operational aspects. Luis Vielma Lobo, CEO of CBM, explains the two decided not to merge because the partnership’s success comes from the distinct expertise and independent characteristics each company brings to the table. Now, due to structural modifications changing the way PEMEX operates, CBM-Ainda has a great opportunity to help the oil company adjust to its new environment. “CBM-Ainda’s role during the transition period will be to support PEMEX in its migration and maturation process towards better practices, especially in contracting and in terms of the business model it needs to adopt,” explains José Pablo Rinkenbach Lizárraga, Director of Ainda Consultores. The idea is to help PEMEX shift its view on service providers from being mere contractors to allies. Rinkenbach Lizárraga believes that developing joint solutions with contractors could help PEMEX boost its execution capacity in a meaningful way. “The country’s production could increase by just improving extraction technologies, but to do so would also involve improving PEMEX’s service contracts,” says Rinkenbach Lizárraga.

Helping PEMEX migrate towards best practices, multidisciplinary work dynamics, design standards, and governance models is a priority for CBM-Ainda. As Rinkenbach Lizárraga explains, a poor governance model and insufficient interface skills can deteriorate communication with a contractor regardless of contract designs, causing PEMEX to overlook opportunities. He points out that PEMEX is reaching an important point of cultural maturity. “People in the top two levels of the organization know that the company has to change, but the lower levels have not been there long enough to carry past inertias in their way of working. With a serious work plan and a clear objective, we can make it react much faster in this important phase.”

Vielma Lobo classifies potentially interested companies into three types: large IOCs that will be focused on large deepwater fields and the booking of reserves, smaller specialized firms dealing with unconventional resources and mature fields, and the final and largest segment is comprised of service companies of all sorts. The CBMAinda partnership can benefit from a niche of smaller, specialized companies looking to exploit unconventional resources and mature fields. “These players have the operational and technical expertise to exploit reservoirs through much needed secondary recovery techniques, and CBM-Ainda could help customers in this segment increase oil production in each project,” says Vielma Lobo.