According to the state oil company’s most recent report, average oil processing for July was 820,128 barrels per day (bpd), up 15% from June and up 29% from July 2021. However, July’s number is still to fall short of the 1 million bpd target set by the government and Pemex for the end of 2022. Oil production remained close to 1.7 million bpd, also below the target of 1.9 million bpd for 2022. Last year, the Mexican government announced a rather radical plan to phase out oil imports, reversing a major reform plan enshrined in the constitution in 2013. As part of the plan, Pemex was to cut crude oil exports from over a million barrels per day to just 435,000 barrels per day in 2023. The move was part of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) effort to reduce imports expensive refined products such as petrol and diesel and instead rely more on domestic production. “Almost 100% of Mexican crude will be refined in our country,” Pemex chief Octavio Romero Oropeza said at the much-publicized opening of a new refinery in the southeastern state of Tabasco. The US is Mexico’s largest oil export market, with the Latin American nation selling 710,000 barrels per day to US refiners in 2021, but also importing 1.16 million b/d. However, high oil prices and an uncertain economic outlook, including high inflation, may lead to the Mexican government scrapping these plans. High oil and gas prices helped Pemex post a net profit of $12.7 billion for the first six months of this year compared with a loss of $1.15 billion in the first half of 2021, despite volume of exports fell 5% to 5.68 million barrels. A barrel of Mexican crude averaged $97.80 during the period, with prices peaking in March at $119.62 shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. The high profits prompted AMLO to declare that Pemex “was bankrupt and now it is being reborn”. By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com More top reads from Oilprice.com:
