Page 7 - LatAmOil Week 01 2023

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The president (in pink shirt at head of table) visited the refinery on December 23 (Photo: Twitter/@lopezobrador_)

At this point, Lopez Obrador added, the plant delays and cost overruns.
will be able to turn out 280,000 bpd of gasoline Pemex has been building the Olmeca plant
and diesel. “We’re advancing toward energy sov- with enthusiastic support from the president,
ereignty,” he wrote. who is keen to ensure that the NOC retains its
The president did not comment on the fact leading role within Mexico’s fuel and energy
that his announcement amounts to yet another sector. Lopez Obrador sees the refinery project
delay for the Olmeca refinery. Mexico’s Energy as a means of ensuring that 100% of Mexican oil
Ministry Rocio Nahle had asserted last July, dur- production can be refined locally and of making
ing the project’s launch ceremony, that the plant domestic petroleum product supplies both plen-
would begin turning out gasoline for sale on tiful and cheap.
the domestic market in December of last year. So far, though, the Olmeca plant has been
Lopez Obrador had said previously that the anything but cheap. The cost of the project was
Olmeca refinery would be launched on time in originally budgeted at $8bn, but Pemex is now
mid-2022, despite concerns about construction on track to spend nearly twice that sum. ™

US authorises Sempra to re-export

gas from Mexican LNG terminals

US-BASED Sempra Energy recently secured
authorisation from the US government to pump
natural gas by pipeline to Mexico, where it will
be processed into LNG for export via terminals
slated for construction on the Pacific coast.
On December 20, the US Department of
Energy (DOE) approved the permits that will
allow Sempra to send gas to the Energía Costa
Azul (ECA) site, located near Ensenada in Baja
California State, and to the Vista Pacífico LNG
site in Topolobampo, a port in Sinaloa State.
With these permits in hand, the company will be The permits cover gas exports from ECA and Vista Pacífico LNG (Image: Sempra)
able to re-export US-produced gas from Mexi-
can territory. multiple phases. (The plant was originally con-
Specifically, it will be able to export the equiv- structed to serve as an LNG import terminal,
alent of 475bn cubic feet (13.45bn cubic metres) but Sempra’s IEnova subsidiary is now convert-
per year of gas from ECA, which is being built in ing it into an export facility.)

Week 01 04•January•2023 www. NEWSBASE .com P7