Mexico State Oil Co. Selling Baseball Field to Raise Cash

Mexico's state-run oil company Petroleos Mexicanos has put a kids’ recreation park up for sale as it combs through its assets searching for property it can exchange for needed cash.

Pemex, which has reported 16 consecutive losses and is nearly $100 billion in debt, is auctioning off a little league baseball field and a sports complex used by employees in the eastern state of Veracruz, according to a report by El Universal reviewing the company’s annual property sales plans. A Pemex press official confirmed the story is accurate, Bloomberg reported.

Mired in the company’s worst financial crisis in its history, Chief Executive Officer Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya has reiterated on several occasions that the company intends to sell its non-strategic assets to generate capital.

In an effort to reduce its operating losses and find partners to improve efficiency in a number of areas, Pemex is said to have hired UBS Group AG to explore strategic alternatives and a potential sale of its fertilizers unit. Pemex said last year it was willing to sell aging assets such as a jack-up rig and a semi-submersible maintenance platform to generate capital.  Also last year, the company hired Bank of America Corp. to lead a search for partners to help reconfigure its refineries.

Pemex did not list the minimum selling price for the sports complex or little league park, though it explained their inclusion in the auction would "attend to the economic, operative and business interests of the company," according to the El Universal report.