Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, pumped 5.3 percent fewer barrels of oil in October as the Cantarell field continued its almost six-year decline.

Production fell to 2.61 million barrels a day, said Carlos Morales, head of exploration and production, today in an interview at a summit in Monterrey, Mexico. Output a year earlier was 2.757 million barrels a day.

The Mexico City-based company is spending a record $19.5 billion this year to find new fields and raise production after output fell at the fastest rate since 1942 last year, costing Pemex more than 300 billion pesos ($22.7 billion) in lost sales.

Pemex may spend 220 billion pesos on exploration and production next year, earmarking 38 billion pesos of the total to exploration, Morales said. Cantarell, the world’s third- largest field in the 1970s, peaked at 2.192 million barrels a day in December 2003. Pemex extracted 573,760 barrels a day in September from the 30-year-old Gulf of Mexico field.

About a quarter of the exploration budget, or 10 billion pesos, will be spent on searching for oil under waters deeper than 500 meters (1,640.5 feet) where Mexico has said it holds about 30 billion barrels of oil, or enough to supply the U.S. for about four years.

Pemex has said it may begin producing natural gas in deep waters by 2013 and oil after that.

Chicontepec Drilling

The company will drill 700 wells at its Chicontepec onshore field this year and about the same number in 2010, Morales said. Pemex plans to spend $11.1 billion at Chicontepec through 2012 to boost output from about 30,000 barrels a day this year to more than 600,000 barrels in 2017.

Morales has said that Pemex needs to drill 1,500 wells a year at Chicontepec to meet production goals. Pemex board member Fluvio Ruiz Alarcon has said Pemex is “too optimistic” about the field and needs to invest elsewhere.

Pemex and the energy ministry are currently reviewing the Chicontepec spending plan, where oil service companies including Tenaris SA, Schlumberger Ltd. and Weatherford International Ltd. have contracts.

To contact the reporter on this story: Carlos M. Rodriguez in Mexico City at carlosmr@bloomberg.net; Andres R. Martinez in Mexico City at amartinez28@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: November 10, 2009 16:31 EST