The greatest industrial success of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) during this six-year term is located on the other side of the Rio Grande. The Deer Park refinery, in Texas, has become the cornerstone of the state oil company's refining system less than two years after being acquired in its entirety by the López Obrador Government for $600 million. The factory, previously owned by Shell, processed an average of 270,000 barrels per day of oil and 232,000 barrels per day of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in 2023. However, more than 80% of its production does not reach Mexico, it remains in the United States for marketing.
Given the continuous delays in the start-up of the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco, whose launch is now promised for next January 31, Pemex's refining results fall mainly on this factory. The director of Pemex, Octavio Romero Oropeza, has praised Deer Park's performance this week, in his most recent appearance at the National Palace. D “The president's decision to acquire this refinery was very good,” he concluded. As of September 2023, the refinery reported a profit of $711 million, a figure lower than the $954 million in 2022. However, the manager attributed this drop to the global decline in the price of crude oil.
The Pemex refineries are located in Cadereyta, Nuevo León; Madero City, Tamaulipas; Minatitlán, Veracruz; Salamanca, Guanajuato; Tula, Hidalgo, and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca. The energy analyst, Ramsés Pech, points out that the productive capacity of these refineries at this time is below 50%, a percentage visibly lower than Deer Park whose utilization level is around 80%, according to Pemex's own figures.
The specialist says that, despite the maintenance that has been given to them, they are very old plants, which due to their inefficiency, the more they produce, the more they lose. Last year, the network of these six refineries in the hands of Pemex produced, together, 423,000 barrels per day of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, which represented a drop of 6.2% compared to 2022. While Deer Park alone contributed 232,000 barrels per day of these products, which was equivalent to 35% of the total production that Pemex reported last year. Although Pemex seeks to increase refining capacity in these six refineries, this will not occur until the start-up of the coking plants, equipment that has been promised for this year.
The six Pemex refineries in Mexico, far from generating barrels of gasoline and higher-value products, have meant a drain on resources. According to its most recent financial report, Pemex Transformación Industrial, the unit under which the refining business line is assigned, reported a net loss of 88,892 million pesos from January to September 2023, being the only subsidiary of the parastatal with this level of losses.
Despite this financial disaster that it represents for Pemex, the most indebted oil company in the world with a total debt of more than 105,000 million dollars, the López Obrador Government has not diminished in its effort to shore up refining within its project. energy sovereignty and although initially the president had assured that in 2023 Mexico would be self-sufficient in the production of gasoline and would stop importing them, now, in the last year of his mandate, the director of Pemex has recognized that this self-sufficiency will be achieved, if ever , in 2025.
Fluvio Ruiz, former director of Pemex and expert in energy issues, warns that the project to increase the refining capacity of this Administration has run into limits and options need to be analyzed, such as the possible import of adequate crude oil to mix and feed the refineries. of the National Refining System with the diet for which they were designed as well as better planning of preventive maintenance in the six refineries located in Mexico.
“It seems to be time to reflect this political will in a new institutional architecture of the sector, an adaptation of the organizational structure and business vision of our oil company, with a view to converting it into an energy company and relaunching its petrochemical activity; as well as a change in its tax regime that makes these mutations economically viable,” concludes Ruiz.
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