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Bloomberg
Mexico processed the lowest amount of crude in decades
in late June and early July, based on preliminary numbers,
after a fire and flood took the country’s largest refinery offline last month.
State-owned Pemex refined 695,000 barrels a day of crude, equivalent to about 42 percent of Mexico’s refining capacity, July 1 to July 16, according to the company’s preliminary data. The last time output was this low was in December 1990.
A fatal accident at the 330,000-barrel-a-day facility on the Pacific Coast in mid-June kicked it offline until at least July 30. The sharp decline in Mexico’s refining output amid plant outages could push Latin American refiners’ crude runs in the third quarter to 120,000 barrels a day less than last year, according to a July 18 report from research firm PIRA Energy Group.
Imports are set to make up some of the difference with 4.5 million barrels of gasoline and diesel sent from the US, Peru, Japan and China from July 9 through July 27, shipping data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Unplanned outages have plagued Pemex’s ageing refineries in recent years, undersc-
oring Mexico’s vulnerability
to fuel shortages. The country’s refinery production likely dropped to as low as 817,000 barrels a day in June, accor-
ding to Pemex’s preliminary
estimates and data compiled
by Bloomberg.