Pemex: Olmeca Refinery to Start Up This Year, Reach Higher Throughput in 2024

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Written by Amir Richani for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Petroleos Mexicanos' (Pemex) (Mexico City) new 340,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Dos Olmeca refinery will start up this year and reach higher runs in 2024, the head of the state-owned energy company told Mexican lawmakers this week.

A presentation by Pemex Chief Executive Officer Octavio Romero Oropeza included a chart indicating the refinery will operate at 17,000 BBL/d this year and then at 320,000 BBL/d in 2024.

In August, Industrial Info reported that Pemex was still starting some operations at the refinery, such as the turbo generators, and was testing other equipment. Also, Industrial Info reported that the "next steps include refractory drying works on the crude unit, heating up and charging of the crude unit" and that the first commercial runs would be reached by late 2023.

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Romero Oropeza said the Olmeca refinery will produce 9,000 BBL/d of fuel in 2023 and about 286,000 BBL/d in 2024.

Mexico's current administration has postponed the startup of the refinery due to project delays. Only in September, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had said that the refinery would produce 290,000 BBL/d of fuels by the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, the other six Pemex refineries, which have a total capacity of 1.64 million BBL/d, are expected to reach utilization of 865,000 BBL/d this year, only 53% of the installed capacity. The current administration has increased refinery runs from 592,000 BBl/d in 2019, though the utilization rates remain low.

Romero Oropeza said he expects refinery runs to reach 1.611 million BBL/d next year. However, this number is driven by 269,000 BBL/d from Pemex's Deer Park, Texas, refinery, which was acquired by Pemex in 2022, and the Olmeca refinery, with 320,000 BBL/d.

On the upstream front, Romero Oropeza noted the recovery of Pemex's crude oil output from 1.642 million BBL/d in January 2019 to 1.785 million BBL/d in 2022.

Pemex has been struggling for over a decade with falling oil production, partly due to the decline of mature fields such as Cantarell and the Ku-Maloop-Zaap oil complex.

Pemex expects to end this year with crude oil output of 1.886 million BBL/d, on par with the projected production for 2024.

The nation's oil output, including condensates, in August was about 1,943 million BBL/d, with Pemex accounting for 94% of the output. These numbers, however, remain considerably lower than the 2.4 million BBL/d promised by Lopez Obrador at the beginning of his tenure.

Nevertheless, Lopez Obrador's administration has been able to halt years of oil production declines by developing new oil fields and higher condensate outputs.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking more than 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).