Mexico‘s oil exports fell at a year-on-year rate of 14.8% in 2023, to $3.29 billion, according to data from the Bank of Mexico.
Dominated by Pemex, a state-owned production company, Mexico’s oil exports include crude oil and petroleum products.
Pemex is Mexico’s largest company by revenue and ranked as the 11th largest crude oil producer and the 20th largest oil and gas company in the world in 2021.
Oil exports
Although Mexico’s oil exports have substantially reduced their importance within Mexico’s total foreign sales, the revenues obtained by Pemex from these sales are relevant to the country’s public sector revenues.
After falling from US$25.985 billion in 2019 to US$17.413 billion in 2020, oil exports grew from US$28.926 billion in 2021 to US$39.212 billion in 2022.
Among the sector’s highlights, on September 6, 2023, the Ministry of Energy (Sener) began construction of a catalyst plant with an estimated production capacity of 890 tons of oil per year. This project aims to save Pemex approximately 80 million pesos per year, which is the approximate amount it currently spends on importing catalytic products from foreign companies.
Debt
On October 27, 2023, Pemex announced that from July to September 2023 liquid hydrocarbon production without external partners averaged 1 million 850,000 barrels per day and the average as of September 30, 2023 was 1 million 861,000 barrels per day.
As of September 30, 2023, Pemex had an accumulated net income of US$3.03 billion and an accumulated debt of US$105.84 million.
Also, as of September 30, 2023, Pemex had reduced its total debt balance by approximately US$23 billion since December 1, 2018, a decline of approximately 18.1 percent.
Then, on December 29, 2023, an executive decree was published in the Official Gazette designating as in the public interest the supply of hydrogen from the U-3400 hydrogen plant at Pemex’s Miguel Hidalgo refinery in Tula de Allende.
According to the decree, Pemex Transformación Industrial, a subsidiary of Pemex, will take over the operations of the plant and will be responsible for compensation to be paid to the former operators of the plant in connection with the declaration of public interest and as required by applicable law.