Power Generation Feed Moving Mexico into Top 10 Global Oil Consumers

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Mexico is nudging its way into the league of the world's top 10 oil consumers, according to the latest International Energy Agency (IEA) (Paris, France) oil market report. This rise in consumption is driven by rising thermo-electric power demand.

In September 2012, the country placed just below South Korea, whose consumption was reported at 2.27 million barrels a day. However, according to the IEA, although Mexico failed to make the top 10 cut for September, it may leapfrog Korea in October, thanks to a spike in oil demand for power generation. It could fall back again in November if the spike in demand proves to be short-lived.

Four of the top seven places in the consumption league are occupied by the BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Brazil is the only Latin American country that is currently in the top 10. In September, demand reached 3.03 million barrels a day. This was above the country's monthly average for 2012 to date of 2.98 million barrels a day.

The U.S. is at the top of the oil consumption league. It averaged 18.2 million barrels a day in September, which was almost double the demand of China, which is in second place with 9.83 million barrels a day.

Latin America is expected to lead global refinery throughput in the first quarter of 2013. According to the IEA, throughput, which measures output relative to input, will rise from 4.5 million barrels a day in September this year to 4.7 million barrels a day in January 2013.

"The growing trend observed at the end of 2012 should continue into the first months of 2013," the IEA report notes. "Most of the increase is expected in China and Latin America, assuming that the Venezuelan outages get resolved. However, declining refining margins in all regions may force low conversion refiners to reduce runs."

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