Pemex's production does not recover and is far from its 2020 goal

The world oil industry continues to be submerged in the crisis in which it was involved in the first months of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is no exception. In the last months of last year, the national oil company registered levels well below the goal set by the federal administration, which has maintained the discourse of support to increase production, without formally reducing the expectations of oil extraction.

Last November -the last data published by the company-, Pemex reported oil production of 1.6 million barrels per day. The goal for the end of 2020 was 1.9 million barrels. November's production meant only an increase of 8,000 barrels per day compared to last October and a reduction of 3.6% or 61,000 barrels compared to the same month in 2019. With last year's results, the state oil company has left behind the period of stabilization of oil production that it registered between October 2019 and March 2020.

Last March, before the beginning of the health contingency in the country, Pemex saw a production of 1.7 million barrels per day, the highest figure since October 2018. But since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico, the company has not recorded oil extraction above 1.7 million units per day. Pemex has not yet formally released its figures for the last month of the year, but a presentation to investors shows that the company's oil production did not rebound last December. Thus, Pemex ended 2020 with a production of almost 300,000 barrels lower than the target set for 2020.

Rocio Nahle, the head of the Energy Secretariat, has said that, as part of the agreement with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Mexico could not exceed 1.7 million barrels per day during 2020. But the production goal was not officially cut by the company's administration, despite changes in demand and the economic paralysis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.