Shrinking Oil Giant Pemex Starts 2017 on Wrong Foot

Mexico’s ATM is stewing in a toxic mix.
Despite the partial recovery of oil prices, 2016 was not a kind year to Mexico’s fast-shrinking state-owned (but soon to be privatized) oil giant, Pemex. For over 70 years the company served as a huge funding asset, at times providing as much as one-third of total government revenues. But in 2016 it became a national liability, requiring a 4.2 billion bailout from the government. It’s unlikely to be the last.
During the first 11 months of 2016, the company registered average production of 2.16 million barrels per day, its lowest in more than three decades. Pemex forecasts that production will fall to around 1.94 million barrels a day by 2017, marking the first time that the figure has fallen below the 2 million barrel point since 1980. Given the gathering deterioration in the company’s accounts – including a total debt overhang of around 100 billion – daily production could fall by as much as 1.6 million per day by 2020, Morgan Stanley warns.
As goeth Pemex’s production, so goeth Mexico’s oil revenues, which have shrunk from 6% of GDP three years ago to 2.5% today. The export figures are just as ugly. In 2011, when the price of Brent crude averaged over $100 a barrel, Pemex’s export revenues hit a historic peak of $49 billion, a monthly average of $4.11 billion. In the first quarter of 2016 the monthly average was just $893 million. That’s a plunge of 78%.

This post was published at Wolf Street on Jan 2, 2017.