MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex exported just 1.008 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in December, the company said, the lowest in at least 25 years. A Pemex spokesperson said the record low was a consequence of sending more oil to the company’s domestic refineries. The company’s database goes back to 1990.
Pemex said it produced 2.275 million bpd of crude oil in December, and averaged 2.267 million bpd for last year. About 80 percent of the output came from offshore shallow water deposits.
The volume of crude output last year marks the eleventh consecutive drop since hitting peak production of 3.38 million bpd in 2004. Following a 2013 constitutional overhaul that ended Pemex’s decades-long monopoly on oil production, Mexico is in the early stages of implementing a sweeping opening of the sector that promises to reverse the decline by luring new private producers into the country.
The energy ministry has said it expects the new oil companies that won extraction contracts late last year to begin producing their first crude later this year or next. The 25 license contracts awarded in December are expected to eventually add 77,000 bpd in new crude output and $1.1 billion in investment, the ministry said.
