The state company Petróleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex, produced half of the gasoline and diesel it promised during November 2022.
The Mexican giant led by Octavio Romero Oropeza produced 312,800 barrels of gasoline per day, 49% below the goal established by Pemex in December 2021, according to a company document and the most recent data published in its database.
Regarding diesel, Pemex’s production reached 152,000 barrels per day, 55% less than the target of the Mexican oil company for the eleventh month of the year.
Pemex’s production is one of the priorities of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, to comply with his energy policy of self-sufficiency in gasoline and diesel and to end imports, a situation that the president compares to producing oranges and buying juice.
But the lack of maintenance and investments in the six-year term of former president Enrique Peña Nieto and the lack of sufficient budget and infrastructure with López Obrador has prevented the goal from advancing and there are even opposing versions at the times in which the objectives are intended to be achieved.
AMLO expects his government to achieve self-sufficiency in gasoline and diesel in 2023, but the Pemex CEO told Bloomberg Línea that it will be until 2024 due to delays in the construction of two coking plants at the Tula and Salina Cruz refineries that reduce fuel oil and Increase production of gasoline and diesel.
The division in charge of producing fuels, Pemex Transformación Industrial (TRI), faces multimillion-dollar losses despite the high prices of crude oil and profits reported by the rest of the company’s business units.
Although Pemex has already built its seventh refinery, Olmeca, in Dos Bocas, Tabasco, the work continues without producing fuel and the Secretary of Energy, Rocío Nahle García, has avoided setting a date for 2023.
Pemex, the world’s most indebted oil company, currently produces 1.6 million barrels of oil per day, of which it exports an average of 958,000 barrels per day and the remainder is sent to its six refineries. Its goal for the end of the six-year term is a production of 2 million and a refining capacity of at least 1.5 million barrels per day processed.
With information from Bloomberg