The Mexican state-owned company processed 905,607 barrels of crude oil per day in its seven refineries, when it was still expecting to reach almost 1.2 million barrels by mid-year.
Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) processed 905,607 barrels of crude oil per day on average in 2024, a volume that implies a use of 46% of its installed capacity -considering the Olmeca refinery- and that was 276,000 barrels per day, 23% below the projection made by the previous administration for this activity.
The latest indicators of the company published in its Institutional Database this Monday reflect that the investment made for the remodeling of the six refineries of the company: which was 72 billion pesos - since until the report made last May by former director Octavio Romero Oropeza at the conference at the National Palace, 12 billion pesos per year were invested in this area - managed to process 882,187 barrels per day in the six refineries that already existed, a volume that was 121,813 barrels per day below the projection of reaching 1,004 million barrels per day committed by the previous administration.
With this, the six Pemex refineries, not counting the new Olmeca refinery in Paraíso, Tabasco, had a utilization of 53.7% of installed capacity in all of 2024, and did not reach the 61% established by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In absolute terms, this volume is the largest in a year that the state-owned company has reported since 2016, when 963,062 barrels per day were processed, using 57% of the 1.64 billion barrels per day capacity that the state-owned oil company had in the refining centers of Cadereyta, Minatitlán, Madero, Salamanca, Salina Cruz and Tula.
Not counting the Dos Bocas refinery, crude oil processing at the six refineries above increased by 11% compared to 2023, and was also 115,204 barrels per day higher than the 2017 process, since maintenance and work to raise this indicator began in 2018.
However, the commitment for the entire year 2024 was to reach 1,181 barrels per day in the oil refining process in national territory, since the Olmeca refinery would have processed 177,000 barrels per day on average in 2024.
Two Mouths Does Not Rise
Pemex's new refining center, which officially cost more than $18 billion (although independent analysts estimate it totaled more than $24 billion) when the commitment at the start of its construction was that it would cost $8 billion, processed an average of 23,275 barrels per day throughout 2024, which would imply a use of 6.8% of its capacity of 340,000 barrels of crude oil.
The Olmeca refinery was originally planned to start up in July 2022, when the inauguration of only the civil works was carried out because there were plants not built and there were no electrical or interconnection facilities between the infrastructure. The first report of crude oil processing at this center near the port of Dos Bocas was almost two years later, in June, when tests were carried out with a process of 9,000 barrels per day and in July 2024 it already processed 65,406 barrels per day of heavy crude oil, with a use of 19% of its capacity.
The refinery, also known as Dos Bocas, has reported heavy crude usage since then, with 25% of its capacity used in August, 5% in September, no processing in October and 17% in November.
In December, the new refinery processed 43,178 barrels of crude oil per day, which was 16,288 barrels less than in November, with a use of 13% of the installed capacity.
It is worth remembering that Pemex's general management also promised in May that a volume of 177,000 barrels per day would be reached on average for the entire year, which would be a 52% use of the facility, after previous reports had said that in 2024 the entire installed capacity would be used for the heavy crude oil process, which is the only one reported and for which the new refinery was designed.
