Mexico’s flagship Dos Bocas refinery allegedly started producing fuel on Friday, September 1st, after the over-budget plant was technically opened last year and missed a deadline to start operations.
Mexico is committed to the goal of processing all of its own oil by sometime next year, said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at his state-of-the-union address in southern Mexico. The refinery in Dos Bocas, in the president’s home state of Tabasco, will produce 290,000 barrels of oil a day on average by the end of the year, adding to the country’s total refining capacities, he said.
Dos Bocas is the crown jewel of Lopez Obrador’s plan to make Mexico self-sufficient in fuel generation. The government has sought to modernize Petroleos Mexicanos’s six other domestic refineries and aims to reduce Mexico’s reliance on fuel imports. Mexico inaugurated the Dos Bocas facility in July last year without having finished construction and after facing billions of dollars in cost overruns.
The six operating refineries saw their daily processing rate fall after they were hit by fires earlier this year, leaving them operating at under 50% capacity.
Source: El Financiero
