U.S. Oil Firms Eager to Bid in Mexico : Energy: They may find out next month if a new contract lets foreigners play a direct role in petroleum production after a 52-year hiatus.

Three weeks after Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady announced what sounded like a new opening for U.S. companies in Mexican oil fields, the implications of a pending $1.5-billion Export-Import Bank loan to Mexico for oil equipment and services remain unclear.

Opinions are divided over whether Mexico is taking the first step toward allowing foreign companies back into its oil patch after 52 years or is simply gearing up for expanded exploration and production, as it did 15 years ago.

The test may come next month, when Petroleos Mexicanos--the government-owned oil monopoly, best known as Pemex--opens bidding on its first international drilling contract in more than a decade.

According to Francisco Rojas, general manager of Pemex, the pact will be a simple drilling service contract, similar to those already in place with two Mexican drilling companies.

However, U.S. oil-service sources--including officials of drilling companies that worked in Mexico during the 1970s and would be likely bidders for a service contract--said this job will be different.

“They are going to offer opportunities to U.S. oil companies to explore; they are going to license outside companies” to develop oil fields, said one industry source, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.

Such talk is anathema to the Mexican government. Oil is a highly sensitive subject in Mexico. Since the oil industry was nationalized in 1938, petroleum has been the symbol of Mexican nationalism and sovereignity.

So it was a surprise when Brady, following two days of talks between the U.S. and Mexican presidents late last month, announced: “For the first time, the services of American companies will be welcome and sought after with regard to drilling and other supplies in the Mexican oil fields.”

Within days, Rojas called a rare press conference with foreign correspondents to squelch any suggestion that Mexican oil fields would be open to foreign investment.

Rather, he said, the bank loan, if approved, would finance purchases of equipment and services, such as those that Pemex has made in the United States through its Houston office for over a decade. Possible suppliers include the dozens of companies--among them Smith International Inc. and Baker Hughes Corp., the Houston-based manufacturers of drill bits--that for years have operated factories in Mexico to fill Pemex orders.

Higher oil prices brought on by the Persian Gulf crisis have provided both the incentive and the means for more aggressive oil exploration and development in Mexico. Pemex is simply contracting with international companies that have the expertise to help, Rojas said.

For example, Pemex has hired international seismographic firms, notably Schlumberger, to look for signs of oil, Rojas noted. The new loan--sought by Pemex as part of its $6.8-billion, six-year investment plan, which includes loans from the export-import banks of 11 different countries--will help pay for the acquisition of more such services from U.S. firms.

Why the dissonance between Brady’s statement and the Mexicans’ perspective?

Gabriel Szekely, assistant director of the U.S.-Mexico Studies Center at the University of California, San Diego, said the explanation is that Brady overstated the situation.

While loaning Mexico money to develop its oil fields is in the best interest of the United States--as Mexico’s largest customer--there is no reason, he said, that major U.S. oil companies should be involved.

However, other observers--such as Rogelio Ramirez de la O, director of Ecanal, an economic analysis firm in Mexico City--believe that Pemex is reacting defensively.

Pemex feels threatened, Ramirez de la O said, by the possibility that Mexico will offer foreign oil companies a share of the oil they find or develop. Such arrangements, known as risk contracts, are used in most of the world’s offshore oil fields.

“The Mexican government is contemplating risk contracts,” he said. “They have reached an impasse, and nobody knows how it will come out.”

Least of all U.S. oil companies, which will not comment on whether they are talking with Pemex.

“When they have a deal, they will announce it,” said one service industry source. “If they are negotiating, they are not going to say anything.”