This study compares key pre-drill exploration assessments and drilling outcomes for conventional petroleum prospects/wells evaluated and drilled in Mexico in 2018–2022. All data come from open sources, which facilitates an independent and unbiased performance analysis of the exploration industry (21 operating companies). The study includes 375 exploration prospects/wells and 80 drilled wells with at least some known exploration outcomes. The geological success rate (58%) is much higher than the average pre-drill probability of geological success (PoS, 35%). Explorers, in general and on average, significantly overestimated geological risks before drilling and made many more discoveries than expected. The 71 drilled wells with known volumetric outcomes delivered the total recoverable resources [2966 million barrels of oil equivalent, mmboe (1 million barrels of oil equivalent = 158,987 m³ of oil.)] close to the total average risked expectation (3325 mmboe), which is a good outcome. However, assessments of success case volumes for individual prospects were rather poor. The majority of discoveries contain recoverable resources that differ by a factor of two or more (from 12 times less to 190 times more) from the pre-drill assessed volumes. The national Mexican company Pemex, on average, significantly underestimated the success-case volumes, while the international oil companies, on average, significantly overestimated them. Based on this study of recent petroleum exploration in Mexico and previous similar studies in Norway and in the Netherlands, we conclude that the pre-drill assessments of geological PoS values and success-case resource volumes have not improved over the last 30 years. We recommend that exploration companies should focus on improving forecasting abilities of the explorers.

本研究比较了 2018-2022 年在墨西哥评估和钻探的常规石油远景/井的关键钻前勘探评估和钻探结果。所有数据均来自开源，这有助于对勘探行业（21 家运营公司）进行独立且公正的绩效分析。该研究包括 375 个勘探远景/井和 80 口至少有一些已知勘探成果的钻井。地质成功率（58%）远高于钻前地质成功的平均概率（PoS，35%）。总体而言，勘探者在钻探之前大大高估了地质风险，并取得了比预期更多的发现。已知体积结果的 71 口钻井提供了总可采资源 [29.66 亿桶石油当量，³石油。）] 接近总平均风险预期（3325 mmboe），这是一个很好的结果。然而，对个别潜在客户的成功案例数量的评估相当差。大多数发现包含与钻前评估量相差两倍或更多（从 12 倍以下到 190 倍以上）的可采资源。平均而言，墨西哥国家石油公司 Pemex 大大低估了成功案例的数量，而国际石油公司平均而言则大大高估了它们。根据这项对墨西哥近期石油勘探的研究以及之前在挪威和荷兰进行的类似研究，我们得出结论，地质 PoS 值和成功案例资源量的钻前评估在过去 30 年中没有改善。