Oil Exports May Not Drop Enough Toward Energy Sovereignty

The 2023 Preliminary General Economic Policy Guidelines (PCGPE), published on April 1 by the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), revealed that contrary to the government’s aim, the country will not be ready to stop exporting crude oil by 2023. Although oil exports will gradually decrease, a research institution asserts that this will not suffice, as Mexico must rely on imports to meet fuel demand.

In May 2021, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that to reach the administration’s goal to achieve energy sovereignty, the country would start reducing its crude oil exports down to nothing by 2023. One of the strategies implemented to support this endeavor was the prominent rehabilitation of six working oil refineries in Mexico, in addition to acquiring the Deer Park refinery and constructing Dos Bocas.

However, SHCP estimates that in 2022, Mexico is set to export 879Mb/d and by 2023, the number will lower to 764Mb/d, meaning that there will only be only a minimal reduction of 13 percent in crude oil exports. The estimations provided by SHCP vary significantly from the figures provided by PEMEX. According to the Ministry of Finance, oil exports will be up by 75 percent, or 329Mb/d, for 2022.

Additionally, the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO) recently released a website to share up-to-date information regarding energy topics from official and reliable sources. Its latest report revealed that oil production was not meeting the administration’s goals, with output continuing to drop since its peak in 2004. The year 2021 ended with 1.69MMb/d, whereas 2004 saw 3.4MMb/d.

 “Mexico is far from being self-sufficient in its energy consumption, the latest data shows that the National Refining System lacks the capacity to absorb the national demand for gasoline,” reads the report, which added that in order for the country to meet this demand, it will need to import most of its gasoline for consumption, complementing the 271,210b/d that the refineries produce with 341,800b/d of imports.