Last September the Olmec refinery produced 13,478 barrels of oil per day, a figure 72% lower than the previous month and very far from the more than 300,000 barrels that just a few weeks ago the government was betting would be produced in the last month of the mandate of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to figures reported this Tuesday afternoon by Mexican Petroleum (Pemex), during the ninth month of the year in the refining complex located in the municipality of Paraíso, Tabasco1,549 barrels of gasoline, 3,492 barrels of diesel and 8,436 barrels of coke were produced per day.
What drew attention was the fact that, although the state company reported on the production of these oil products, no crude oil processing was also reported in the complex, after the processing of 84,128 barrels of oil per day was reported in August.
Last Saturday, August 3, in the company of the then president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, former president López Obrador inaugurated the commercial activities of the Olmeca refinery, after more than two years of delay.
Then, on Wednesday, August 7, he stated that the factory had already was producing 150,000 barrels of gasoline per day and reiterated what Octavio Romero, then general director of Pemex, had been stating in previous months: that in September the complex would be processing 340,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
“It is already producing around 150,000 barrels (daily) of gasoline and I estimate that, by the end of the month, in mid-September, it will already be producing 340,000 barrels. We are going to be producing, in this refinery alone, 20% of all the gasoline we consume in the country,” declared López Obrador in his morning conference on August 7.
A few days before, on July 19, during his speech at López Obrador’s morning conference, Octavio Romero Oropeza had assured that in September the Olmec refinery would process 340,000 barrels per day (100% of its capacity).
And he calculated that, adding its production to that of the six previously established Pemex refineries, the country would be producing one million 26,000 barrels of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel per day.
According to data published this Tuesday by Pemexproduction was less than half, remaining at the second lowest level of the year, with 474,893 barrels per day, 36,528 less than in August.
