Mexico City.- The promise of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to stop oil shipments abroad to process it in the country’s refineries was broken.
In fact, oil exports managed to grow 7.2 percent last March compared to the same month of the previous year, reveal the figures of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
In the third month of the year, the state oil company sent to the international market 971,000 barrels per day, 66,000 more than in the same month of 2022, when it exported 905,000 barrels.
Despite the fact that the number of barrels was higher, the value of exports registered a fall of 31.3 percent.
Last March, the value of crude oil shipments abroad was 1,931.7 million dollars, against 2,814.6 million dollars in the same period of 2022.
The record price per barrel of oil registered in March 2022 exceeded the average 100 dollars per barrel, which caused the oil industry to detonate its income.
Currently, the average price per barrel is at 67 dollars.
According to the federal Executive, it seeks to eliminate crude oil exports to produce the gasoline and fuels that are demanded in the country, thus achieving energy sovereignty.
“In the energy sector, we will achieve the objective of stopping buying gasoline and diesel abroad, we will produce and sell these fuels in the domestic market.
“This will imply not exporting crude oil and transforming all our raw material in Mexico; for this, by the end of 2023, we will be processing one million 200 thousand barrels per day in the six refineries that have been rehabilitated; an additional 340 thousand barrels in the refinery that we bought from the oil company Shell and the same amount, another 340 thousand barrels, at the new refinery in Dos Bocas, Paraíso, Tabasco,” said the President in a speech on December 1, 2021.
He affirmed that a capacity to refine around one million 880 thousand barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel will be achieved.
However, the Economic Package presented by the Ministry of Finance last year, in the General Economic Policy Criteria, it was foreseen that crude oil exports this year would be around 784 thousand barrels per day.
Abril Moreno, general director of the consulting firm Perceptia 21, explained that it is not possible for Mexico to stop exporting crude oil, both because of what it implies in economic terms for the country’s public finances and because of the lack of capacity to process everything to meet demand. of service stations.
“What enters the country from sales of crude oil is beneficial in many ways, such as current spending and resources for programs or infrastructure.
“Then we do not know when Dos Bocas will be left, around 2026 or 2027 it is estimated because no refinery can immediately operate at 100 percent; Deer Park is not for domestic use due to the supply contracts that Shell maintains abroad and the refineries in Mexico are barely at 50-55 percent of their capacity, so they are not in the best conditions to be able to cover the demand for fuels,” he said.
