Paradise, Tabasco. Three years ago, Paraíso, Tabasco, went from being a fishing port and beach for local tourism to a small city that revolves around the construction of a project: the Olmeca refinery of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), which according to some of the 35,000 workers who today still carry out the civil works, have progressed less than 35%, and just to complete the construction, they have contracts for six more months. Later, the installation of infrastructure will begin to connect the 17 plants and 340,000 barrels of crude oil will be refined in a couple of years, hopefully.
In principle, the head of Energy, Rocío Nahle, told President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that there are still two large plants to arrive, because “they came from the high seas”, as was heard in the private tour of the work that was given only by the first president, the director of Pemex, Octavio Romero Oropeza, and the Secretary of Energy. The tour was carried out by them, without the media or guests, because “there is not much to see yet,” according to those who work at the Techint company, which carries out the civil works.
“We have been four months and according to the contracts, we calculate another six, for what we are doing: civil engineering. It’s not that fast, it couldn’t be ready in three years. The dredging and conditioning of the land was barely done last year. It’s not going to flood, it’s going to work, but it’s not ‘fill me up with another one,’” they told El Economista outside the plant.
Therefore, although the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) granted permission to generate electricity at the refinery at a forced pace last Thursday, “obviously cogeneration is not ready, it will be possible to generate electricity until the operation begins, today we we light up with the network of the Federal Electricity Commission”, said an ICA worker in one of the 12 new food stalls that were installed near the refinery, because it has been necessary to increase lodging, local products and services in more than 40 %, since to the almost 100,000 inhabitants of the town have been added 35,000 workers from all over the Republic, who mostly sleep in Comalcalco, but work from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Paraíso and then go out to eat, drink and fill the main street of the town, which looks like “a carrot orchard”, packed with people in orange overalls.
For now, it doesn’t matter if the workers belong to Samsung, Techint, ICA or Pemex, they all wear light orange. The uniform serves to identify oneself when entering the construction, but does not include the helmet or anti-inflammatory materials because there are no combustible liquids or pipelines in the refinery, they explained.
On the land where the refinery is located, it was necessary to dismantle two beaches for Tabasco tourism: Paradero and Caracol. Whether due to the pandemic or the abrupt increase in demand, the price of food and lodging services has increased by up to 70%, according to the locals themselves.
Boarding a taxi to Villahermosa requires at least half an hour to wait in line in the center of the town, because there was also no planning for transportation or access roads, so digital mobility platforms are prohibited and there are only 100 cars available. according to the person in charge of this unique taxi site. “They are going to send us 30 more cars, packed, next week,” he said.
The consultant Scala detailed to the SICT in recent days that there are no routes for the arrival of supplies to the place, and this must also be corrected, because if the town has already collapsed with the transfer of people and construction equipment, the arrival and departure of fuel tankers will not be possible in the short term.
But there is work, there is movement, and many of those who buy drinks in Oxxo, Chedraui or Soriana to withstand the 38 degrees that are still experienced at the time of departure, hope to go to the Mayan Train. There was nothing and today there is a disconnected refinery in a town that has already changed forever.
AMLO inaugurates what there is
Officially, although only as a protocol, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador cut this Friday the inaugural ribbon of the Olmeca refinery near the port of Dos Bocas, which will reach its processing capacity of 340,000 barrels of crude oil per day, at least in 2026. , according to various analyses.
The president insisted that the 567-hectare site was the best place to install the new refinery, because it brings together in storage centers the production of both shallow waters from Campeche and Tabasco, and mature land fields in the region.
“Here comes 1 million barrels a day, to Dos Bocas, so there is raw material; I don’t know, they had to make a special investment in pipelines,” said the president regarding the work that will cost at least 8.9 billion dollars. , although this amount can rise to more than 12,000 million dollars, the government has admitted.
The story before Dos Bocas
- The last complete refinery that Petróleos Mexicanos inaugurated in the country was the Antonio Dovalí Jaime center, in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, on August 24, 1979.
- This plant, with a capacity of 165,000 barrels of crude oil processing (half of what was projected for the Dos Bocas refinery, Tabasco) was expanded just nine years after its construction, to reach a capacity of 330,000 barrels per day.
- The last major reconfiguration of a refinery concluded in July 2011 when President Felipe Calderón inaugurated, two years late, the rehabilitation of the refinery in Minatitlán, Veracruz, whose cost rose from 12,306 million pesos to 32,581 million pesos.
- In 2008, Pemex announced the construction of a new refinery next to the existing one in Tula, Hidalgo, at a cost of 10,000 million dollars and a processing capacity of 250,000 barrels of crude oil.
- In 2014, the government canceled the project, whose renovation work and perimeter fence spent around 620 million dollars. In its place, major maintenance was planned for the existing refinery, which remained unfinished after the termination of the contract with the Brazilian company Odebrecht.
