PEMEX Falls 150 Places in Global 500 List

Mexico’s state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) has fallen 150 places in the Fortune Global 500 ranking. 

This annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine, which ranks the top five hundred companies in the world by total revenue in the respective fiscal year, has published its 2021 edition. For PEMEX, this means falling 150 places to the 257 Global position . In 2018, the year President López Obrador took office, the company was listed at 107. PEMEX’s total revenue in 2021 totaled US$44 billion. Compared to last year’s figures, PEMEX has lost over 40 percent of its revenue, and this decrease also coincides with Moody’s Investors Services’ and Fitch Ratings’ adjustments of the company’s grade in their ranking systems.

Both financial companies have assured the adjusted rankings come from the fact that the NOC has redirected its business to ensuring national energy self-efficiency, incrementing production, and halting exports. Moody’s has pointed out that the refinery business lost US$17 billion between 2018 and 2020, the same period where PEMEX lost places in various rankings. The government’s strategy to achieve these mentioned goals include the rehabilitation of the six existing refineries in the country, in addition to the construction of Dos Bocas in Tabasco, and the recent controversial purchase of Deer Park from Shell in Texas earlier this year. Dos Bocas is expected to have a capacity of 340,000  barrels per day, which, the government says, will be enough to ensure energetic autonomy and stop imports. 

President López Obrador has assured PEMEX will not be abandoned. “The restructuring process has begun,” the president said during his daily morning news conference, referring to a major debt restructuring currently underway. The company’s debt with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) amounts to over MX$1,640 million, including default interest; payment default has resulted in several electricity cuts in PEMEX’s facilities. The President further added that the Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE)  and other mechanisms were created under past governments to prevent PEMEX’s growth and its development. “This institute was dedicated to stopping the growth of both PEMEX and CFE,” said the president. 

Fortune revealed total revenue of the world´s biggest companies in 2020 was a record-high of US$33.3 trillion; that number has shrunk to US$31.7 trillion this year, a fall of 4.8 percent and the first decline in half a decade, due, of course, to the COVID-19 pandemic. The energy and automotive sectors were most affected, having a decrease of more than 10 percent in sales.