Mexico’s Oil Production is Falling, and This Could Destroy the Dream of Energy Independence
The new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, will face the need to solve a number of problems in the oil industry, which is one of the main ones in the country’s economy, writes the Reuters agency. Mexico is a major oil producer, but production at old fields, located mainly in the Gulf of Mexico, has now fallen to a more than four-year low. If the state does not provide investment in hydrocarbon exploration and production, then Mexico could become an oil importer in the next decade, which would be an unheard-of event for the once key exporter of black gold.
Mexico has a number of prospects for offshore oil fields, but even under an optimistic scenario without investing a lot of money, the country could face a decline in oil production after 2030. There are some opinions that the decline in black extraction will begin even earlier, since the state does not compensate for oil production with new reserves.
The agency notes that the state-owned company Pemex, which has several old and unmodernized refineries, cannot meet the demand for fuel in the country. As a result, Mexico sells oil, but buys gasoline and diesel, mainly from the United States. To correct the situation, a new refinery with a capacity of 340 thousand barrels per day was built in the country several years ago, but it does not meet the economy’s needs for oil products. Mexico needs large-scale geological exploration. At the same time, the authorities need to focus on building refineries near the fields in order to finally increase fuel production volumes. At the same time, experts interviewed by Reuters are pessimistic about plans to develop renewable energy sources in the country.
