ZCZC
BCN-18
MEXICO-ENERGY-OIL
Mexican state oil firm Pemex loses $7.5 bn in 2018: official
MEXICO CITY, Feb 28, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Mexico’s state oil company Pemex on
Wednesday reported losses of 148.634 billion pesos ($7.558 billion) for 2018,
a significant drop on the 280 billion peso losses from the year before.
Mexico’s largest company lost 125.5 billion pesos in the fourth quarter of
2018, compared with 299.7 billion pesos from the corresponding period the
year before.
Pemex registered revenues of 1.68 trillion pesos, up from 1.39 trillion in
2017, including 407 billion pesos in the final quarter.
Fourth quarter hydrocarbon and crude production was down on the previous
year yet sales nonetheless increased by 2.3 percent.
That was mostly due to “export sales increasing five percent as a result
of the recovery in crude prices,” said Pemex.
The company owes more than $100 billion while its Fitch credit rating was
dropped to negative in October, creating greater uncertainty among investors.
The government said earlier this month it would inject 107 billion pesos
into the company to boost production but experts say that figure might not be
enough.
Production has dropped by almost 50 percent in 15 years from 3.4 million
barrels a day in 2004 to 1.8 million.
The previous government under Enrique Pena Nieto had tried to reverse that
trend by opening the market to the private sector, ending Pemex’s 80-year
monopoly.
But new leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador criticized that
strategy and in December cancelled the last oil auctions planned for 2019,
announcing that he would launch his own plan to boost Pemex’s production.
BSS/AFP/HR/1005