Crude oil processing, fuel production showing increases

by Mexico News Daily

Mexico’s six petroleum refineries are showing new signs of life: fuel production and crude processing capacity are up and unscheduled stoppages have been reduced to zero.

State oil sector reports seen by the newspaper El Universal show that production of regular and premium gasoline in the third week of February was 86.7 percent higher than in the first week of January.

Diesel and aviation fuel production also increased, by 98.3 percent and 68.7 percent respectively in the same period.

The month-over-month figures are not quite as impressive but positive nonetheless.

Daily gasoline production this month has averaged 192,000 barrels per day (bpd) compared to 128,000 bpd last month – a 50 percent increase – and 153,000 bpd in December. Diesel production was up 32 percent to 131,000 bpd in February compared to 99,000 bpd last month.

While the signs are promising, the National Refining System (SNR) is still a long way from getting back to production levels seen a decade ago when they reached their highest point in 29 years.

During the last two weeks of this month, automotive fuel production has averaged 213,000 bpd – just 42.3 percent of the average daily production of 504,100 bpd in January 2009.

With regard to crude oil processing, the six oil refineries achieved an average capacity of 484,000 bpd during January but this month, the figure has increased by 15.7 percent to 560,000 bpd.

Looking at figures for the first week of last month and the third week of February, the increase is even more impressive.

Crude processing has increased from 309,500 bpd to 664,00 bpd in the period, a 114 percent surge. However, the figure represents less than 40 percent of the refineries’ combined processing capacity if they were operating at an optimal level.

Another good result for the oil sector is that there hasn’t been a single work stoppage at refineries this month compared to 40 in January and 48 in December.

According to the oil sector reports, Mexico’s oil production and processing problems were, as of the end of the third quarter last year, primarily linked to “operational problems” at the refineries in Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas, and Minatitlán, Veracruz.

At the time both facilities were only operating at a minimal capacity.

To improve production and processing capacity across the SNR, an oil sector report said, it was “essential to continue general maintenance and preventative programs” at all refineries.
Petroleum production has been declining in Mexico for years.

Earlier this month, President López Obrador announced a 107-billion-peso (US $5.5-billion) rescue plan for Pemex aimed at reducing the state oil company’s financial burden and strengthening its capacity to invest in exploration and production.

He has pledged to reduce Mexico’s dependency on petroleum imports and part of his rescue plan for the sector includes the construction of a new refinery in Tabasco.

But while the president is optimistic, financial institutions rejected the government’s plan, describing it as insufficient and disappointing, while Fitch Ratings warned that it doesn’t insulate the state oil company against future cuts to its credit rating, which it currently rates at just one notch above junk.

Source: El Universal (sp).

In other news, in Nicaragua

Nicaragua talks on crisis begin, dozens of prisoners freed

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Representatives of President Daniel Ortega and the opposition sat down face-to-face in a restart of long-stalled talks on resolving Nicaragua’s political crisis Wednesday, shortly after authorities released dozens of people arrested in last year’s crackdown on anti-government protests.

The meeting at a business institute south of the capital, Managua, was held behind closed doors and journalists were not allowed access.

The first day had been expected to be used to set the agenda and format for talks, and at its end the sides released a statement saying they agreed to nine of the 12 points on a preliminary road map and would meet again Thursday. The statement read by Apostolic Nuncio Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag did not provide details about what the points were.

Ortega did not take part in the talks but was represented by his foreign minister, a magistrate, several lawmakers and a student leader. The opposition delegation included several prominent business leaders, a noted academic, a politician and a university student. Sommertag, the Vatican’s ambassador to Nicaragua, and Managua’s cardinal were present as observers.

Last year’s protests demanding Ortega leave office and allow early elections prompted a deadly crackdown by security forces and armed, pro-government civilian groups. At least 325 people were killed, 2,000 wounded, hundreds imprisoned and more than 50,000 fled into exile.

One of the opposition’s primary demands has been the release of the estimated 770-plus people considered political prisoners jailed for participating in demonstrations.

Hours before talks began Wednesday, several vans carrying people in inmates’ uniforms left the Modelo prison in the capital escorted by heavily armed police in trucks.

Source: Associated Press.

Looting began with Salinas, the president charged, calling him ‘the father of modern inequality’

by Mexico News Daily

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador delivered a scathing attack on five past presidents yesterday and Wednesday, accusing them of “pillage” during the “neoliberal period” of the past 30 years.

He also said that the Mexican people could be asked in a public consultation if they want Carlos Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto to be put on trial for their alleged crimes.

Speaking at his morning press conference yesterday, López Obrador said that the corruption and looting started during the 1988-1994 government led by Salinas, who he dubbed “the father of modern inequality.”
“We’re cleaning the government of corruption because the entire neoliberal period was characterized by pillage, not just the previous administration. This started in the government of Salinas,” he said.

“To speak clearly, the problems we are suffering from now originated then – when the assets of the people, of the nation, were handed over. When the policy of privatization was started is when inequalities in Mexico deepened and I can prove it, with information from the World Bank, I have the proof,” López Obrador said.

The president said that at the start of Salinas’ administration, only one Mexican appeared on Forbes’ billionaires list but at the end of his six-year term “24 appeared on the list of the world’s richest men.”
The 24 billionaires shared wealth of US $48 billion, López Obrador said, claiming “that was the size of the transfer of resources, the delivery of national assets to private citizens.”

Zedillo, who continued the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party between 1994 and 2000, perpetuated Salinas’ privatization push by selling off Mexico’s state-owned railway company and systems, the president said.

Zedillo also misused Fobaproa – a contingencies fund –turning debt owed by banks into public debt and costing the country a billion pesos in interest payments, López Obrador charged.

The leftist then turned his attention to Fox, who governed Mexico for the National Action Party (PAN) between 2000 and 2006, saying that the “preponderance of corruption and waste” during his presidency was “notorious.”

López Obrador also took aim at the ex-president for awarding favorable mining concessions and on Wednesday accused him of masterminding fraud in the 2006 presidential election that he lost narrowly to Calderón.

“We want to try Fox for being a traitor of democracy. Because after he reached [the presidency] through a movement to establish democracy, he headed an electoral fraud operation to impose Felipe Calderón,” he said.

Once in power, Calderón “acted with indolent irresponsibility,” López Obrador charged, because he started the so-called war on drugs by deploying the military to combat cartels without first carrying out a proper analysis of the security situation.

“He stirred up the hornet’s nest,” the president remarked, explaining that Calderón’s strategy unleashed a wave of violence and disappearances.

Peña Nieto “did the same,” López Obrador continued, referring to the previous government’s perpetuation of the militarized crime fighting strategy.

He added: “There was corruption with Peña but it came from before, that’s why a cleansing is taking place, it’s going to take time, not a lot but there are people [in positions] above who are not going to be in our government.”

The president defended his attack by saying that “I have to provide the background because sometimes there is amnesia and the conservatives tend to be very biased.”

Past governments left “a garbage dump, a mess,” López Obrador declared.

On Wednesday, the president explained that he has asked Congress to make changes to Article 35 of the constitution in order to make public consultations legally valid after which “the people will decide” if the five past presidents should be pursued legally for their alleged wrongdoings.

As he has said before, López Obrador indicated that his personal preference was to let bygones be bygones but stressed that the people will have the “final word” on the matter.

In his typical outspoken and colorful fashion, Vicente Fox fired back at López Obrador, declaring on Twitter that he too will face legal judgement for his actions.

“You’re also going on trial,” Fox wrote, listing a range of crimes López Obrador could be tried for including the deaths of 175 people who were “burned alive,” ruining Pemex and environmental damage resulting from his proposals to build the Maya Train on the Yucatán peninsula and a new oil refinery on the Tabasco coast.

Calderón also took to Twitter to respond to López Obrador.

“Accusing without proof violates the constitution because it breaks the presumption of innocence . . . Doing it from the power of the presidency and without even mentioning a specific crime is abusive, dishonest and immoral,” he wrote.

López Obrador has also accused the former PAN president of being complicit with fuel theft and corruption because in 2016 he accepted a position on the board of an energy company that was awarded contracts during his presidency.
The Morena party leader has made combating corruption the raison d’etre of his government and vowed not to take a backward step in his crusade against it.

At a January press conference, the president said that his predecessors were either accomplices to corruption or they turned a blind eye — “there’s no way [they] didn’t know.”

“. . . All the juicy business done in the country, deals of corruption, were greenlighted by the president.”

Source: Milenio (sp), Sin Embargo (sp).