Equivalent to almost 60% of the national production of this type of fuel in April.
The new Olmeca refinery of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) located in Paraíso, Tabasco, will reach a process volume of 73,000 barrels per day of ultra-low sulfur diesel this week, equivalent to almost 60% of the national production of this type of fuel in April.
After Leopoldo Figueroa, transportation manager of Pemex Transformación Industria revealed to gas businessmen at the Convention and Expo of the National Organization of Petroleum Retailers (Onexpo) that this new refining center near the port of Dos Bocas has already distributed product to gas stations. Tabasco service, sources inside the Dos Bocas refinery confirmed that the production volume began since May.
According to the official who requested anonymity, throughout the fifth month of 2024, a process average of 45,000 barrels per day of ultra-low sulfur diesel was achieved. This volume is equivalent to 23% of the total diesel production that Pemex had in April (189,700 barrels per day), and 36% of the ultra-low sulfur refined product (122,600 barrels per day).
"Today we are producing 56,000 barrels, and the intention is that today the plant will be brought to maximum capacity, which is 73,000 barrels," the official said this Thursday, June 20.
However, the Pemex indicators for June 24 could already indicate the production of the Olmeca refinery, although not as part of the production of this plant but as fuel for other centers.
And according to the last request for information to the National Transparency Portal, which Pemex Industrial Transformation (TRI) responded to the National Institute of Access to Information (INAI) on May 29: “at the moment the necessary tests are being completed. the facilities of the Olmeca refinery in which hydrocarbon processing tests could be included, these tests and their respective results are not yet part of the information of this obligated subject (Pemex TRI).”
Therefore, the fuels leaving the Olmeca refinery can be counted within the production of other refineries, such as Madero, in Tamaulipas, as explained a month ago by Octavio Romero Oropeza, general director of Pemex in the National Palace, where he said that the new center refiner, with a total installed capacity of 340,000 barrels per day of process, has already begun tests to produce ultra-low sulfur diesel, but not from crude oil refining, but with already refined diesel that arrives by ship from Madero, Tamaulipas.
The director of Pemex projected that the new refining complex will process an average of 177,000 barrels of crude oil per day during 2024, that is, 66,000 barrels less than what he predicted just last January.
Since 2019, the current administration has committed to the construction of the seventh Pemex refinery in the country with a maximum cost of US$8 billion, and its complete operation on July 1, 2022, the date on which the president and his cabinet held a ceremony. to cut the ribbon on the offices and process plants, which today number 18, disconnected from each other.
At the beginning of last May, the government again delayed the start-up of the new Olmeca refinery, which, according to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will operate in June 2024 and will cost US$18,816 million, an amount that more than doubles the cost projected by the current administration.
