CRUDE OIL INPUTS TO MEXICO’S PETROLEUM REFINERIES FALL For the fifth consecutive year,crude oil inputs to Mexico’s petroleum refineries have dropped to nearly 600,000 bpd in 2018,a 50 percent drop from from 2013 levels

摘要

This decline in crude oil processing has coincided with a decrease in domestic production of the light crude oil that the country’s refineries are better suited to process.Mexico has increasingly relied on imports of petroleum products from the United States to satisfy domestic demand.Petroleos Mexicanos(Pemex),Mexico’s national oil company,owns and operates the country’s six petroleum refineries,which have a combined atmospheric crude oil distillation capacity of about 1.6 million bpd.On an aggregate basis,performance at Pemex refineries has declined over the past five years after maintaining an average refinery utilisation rate near or above 75 percent between 1990 and 2013.By 2018,the utilisation rate of Mexico’s refinery network fell to less than 40 percent.Pemex’s refineries are mostly configured to process light crude oil.Of its six refineries,three(Minatitlan,Cadereyta,Madero)are equipped with coker units to produce lower-sulphur gasoline from heavy crude oil.The 35 percent decrease in Mexican light crude oil production between 2013 and 2018 has resulted in limitations on crude oil refinery inputs.