Pico’s Cheiron forms JV with Pemex on its Cardenas-Mora project: Cheiron Holdings, a subsidiary of the Diab family’s Pico group — won the rights to partner with Mexican national oil company Pemex on its onshore Cardenas-Mora project, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Cheiron becomes only the second company to become an equity partner of Pemex since the privatization of the sector in 2013 ended the company’s decades-long monopoly and allowed it to develop projects with private and foreign oil companies.

Meanwhile, the first company to form a JV with Pemex, Eni, hopes to replicate its Zohr success in Mexico: Meet Eni’s Chief Exploration Officer Luca Bertelli, the man whose intuition and experience as a geologist helped Eni discover the largest find in the Mediterranean. In an interview with Reuters, Bertelli discussed how the company went from being written off as an explorer and downstream player to making some of the biggest finds, and how it plans to replicate Zohr’s success in other discoveries, particularly Mexico. “We feel there’s room for surprise, even in areas previously explored,” said Bertelli.

Some Zohr backstory: Using a combination of experience in recognizing a thick layer of limestone — carbonate salt ignored by other majors, and bringing in its advanced supercomputer to analyze decades of historical data — Eni beat out other companies to Zohr. This is the formula it hopes will give it an edge in Mexico.