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On the remote, jungle-hemmed beach of Tortuguero, south of Veracruz, a handful of Mexican and U.S. oil drillers slapped each other's backs and shouted with hoarse joy. A few weeks ago, boring at an angle to a depth of 6,000 feet under the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, their rig had tapped a pool of rich green-black petroleum. Last week Tortuguero No. 1 surged into test production at a steady 500 barrels a day.

Tortuguero was the first producing well to be explored and drilled in Mexico with U.S. capital since ex-President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated foreign oil companies' properties in 1938. The well contributed its bit to the rise in Mexican oil production, which has soared from an average 130,000 barrels daily in 1946 to an all-time record last fortnight of 229,000 barrels a day.

New Brightness. The man mainly responsible for the new brightness of the Mexican oil picture, and for the reappearance in it of U.S. operators, is Antonio Bermudez, 53, a handsome, greying Chihuahua industrialist. He was appointed director of the government oil monopoly, Pemex, a few days after President Miguel Aleman took office in 1946.

In the eight years that had then passed since expropriation, Mexico's aging equipment ingeniously held together with baling wire had barely managed to keep established wells producing; hardiy anything had been done in the way of new exploration and drilling. With cabinet rank to help him make needed changes and deal firmly with the high-riding, left-wing oil union, Bermudez brought in 51 producing wells in 1947 and 83 more the following year. In 1949, Pemex added 180 new wells to bring national production to an estimated 60 million barrels for the year.

New Fields. Bermudez says that he spends about 99% of his waking hours thinking about Pemex. Three days each week he visits oil regions in his DC-3, "El Petrolero"; the rest of the time he works hard in Pemex' pseudo-colonial, four-floor office building on Mexico City's Avenida Juarez. He often dashes over to the Casa Crema for a conference with President Aleman.

Bringing the Americans back was one of Bermudez' shrewdest strokes. The first group to begin work, in June 1949, was the Mexican American Independent Oil Co. (C.I.M.A.), an operating unit jointly set up by the Signal Oil & Gas Co., the American Independent Oil Co. and hustling California Oilman Ed Pauley, who had had previous experience in Mexico. C.I.M.A. was allotted an unexploited area along the Gulf in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche for exploration and drilling. After payment of their expenses, the Americans will collect 15 to 18 1/4% of the new wells' income for 25 years. C.I.M.A. hoped to bring in a gusher in Campeche before the end of January, expected to start drilling on Tortuguero No. 2 in a couple of weeks.

Said Antonio Bermudez last week: "We have every reason in the world to be optimistic ... In 1950 we should be able to average 250,000 barrels a day. Within the next 60 days we will be able to announce three important new contracts with United States groups."

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