Pemex Crude Exports Down 45% in March Yet Revenue Tops $1 Billion

Mexico is selling less oil to the world than at any time since the 1990s, and earning more for what it does sell. The two halves of that sentence describe the same policy.

Pemex crude exports landed at 415,100 barrels per day in March on the Mexican blend, the company reported in operating data released over the weekend. The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, reports that the volume figure is 44.7 percent lower year on year and roughly 20 percent below Mexico’s official 2026 export target of 521,000 barrels per day, set in the Finance Ministry’s preliminary 2027 fiscal criteria.

The price story moved the other way. Pemex realised an average $82.3 per barrel in March, the highest monthly reading since August 2022, with daily prints occasionally clearing $100 and the Mexican mix touching $99.21 in the week of March 20. Total March crude-export revenue therefore reached $1.059 billion, breaking back through the billion-dollar monthly threshold for the first time since October 2025.

Why Pemex Crude Exports Fell to a Historic Floor

The shift is by design. Pemex sent 71.2 percent of its hydrocarbon output, about 1.65 million barrels per day, into Mexico’s National Refining System in March, leaving less to ship abroad. The federal government has pursued the same redirection across the first quarter, with full-quarter exports averaging 405,500 barrels per day, a 38.8 percent year-on-year drop and the lowest first-quarter reading in Pemex history.

Revenue compressed alongside volume. First-quarter export receipts came in at $2.483 billion, down 35.6 percent year on year despite the price tailwind. Shipments to the Americas, where the United States remains the main customer, fell 34.1 percent to 240,200 barrels per day; flows to the Far East collapsed 89.9 percent to 11,000 barrels per day, an effective exit from those markets at a time when Saudi Arabia is filling the gap.

What Pemex Crude Exports Are Being Replaced By

The seven national refineries operated at 57.7 percent of capacity in the quarter, low absolute readings but enough to drive significant downstream output gains. Diesel production rose to 285,700 barrels per day from 168,200 a year earlier, a 70 percent increase, and the Olmeca refinery at Dos Bocas pushed toward design capacity for the first time. The strategic logic is to convert crude that would have shipped abroad into refined products that displace gasoline imports and capture the value-added margin domestically.

The math only closes if refining performance improves further. Mexico still imports roughly 500,000 barrels per day of refined products beyond what its refineries produce, and the gasoline-subsidy floor on the IEPS fuel tax becomes more expensive as crude input costs rise. The Pemex Petrobras technical cooperation announced last month and the formal May 13 working visit are both bets on closing that gap with foreign expertise rather than private equity.

What It Means for Pemex Credit and Mexican Fiscal

For bondholders, the March-quarter print is mixed. Pemex reported a net loss of 45.99 billion pesos in the first quarter on April 30, the third consecutive quarterly loss, but financial debt fell to $79.04 billion at quarter-end from $85.25 billion three months earlier. That is the lowest debt reading in years and continues the trajectory that earned upgrades from Fitch and Moody’s in 2025.

For sovereign credit, the petroleum-revenue line in the 2026 fiscal calendar matters more than the export volume by itself. The Finance Ministry budgeted 1.204 trillion pesos in petroleum revenue, around 13.8 percent of total budget receipts, on a Mexican-mix assumption of $58 per barrel. With current prices running well above that anchor, Mexico will close 2026 with a windfall on the petroleum line if production holds, but only if pesos earned in dollars are not eaten back by gasoline-subsidy costs and refinery import bills.

The verdict on the policy will not be written by a single quarter. But the March export reading captures the trade-off cleanly: less crude going out, more value per barrel, and the highest-stakes refinery bet in Mexican history still in its proving phase.