Mexico aims to lift oil and gas production by almost 50 percent in the next six years and in January will award infrastructure and drilling contracts to develop 20 fields, state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos said on Saturday. Octavio Romero, chief executive officer of the company generally known as Pemex, said the new government would increase exploration investment by around 10 percent annually to reverse dwindling output as he presented a new plan for the industry. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1, wants to revive Pemex, which has become heavily indebted as crude output fell from a peak of nearly 3.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2004 to less than 1.8 million in October. “It’s a new Pemex rescue,” Lopez Obrador said alongside Romero in the port of Ciudad del Carmen in the southern Gulf of Mexico shortly before his government was due […]