Mexico City — Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Tuesday that the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco, one of the flagship projects of his government, will begin fuel production no later than November, after a delay of more than a year.
State oil company Pemex’s seventh refinery will produce half of its capacity initially, with 170,000 barrels per day before the end of the year, “while the other half will be added in December or January,” the president said during his morning press conference.
Dos Bocas was inaugurated by the president on July 1, 2022, but without producing fuel because it was in a testing phase, but more than a year later the first fuel has yet to be produed.
AMLO, as López Obrador is known, said that the construction of a 100-km railroad line from Estación Chontalpa to the port of Dos Bocas was pending, but said that fuel can be shipped out of the facility by pipelines or by sea.
“Fuel can be taken out by road tankers and we have the port of Dos Bocas to take fuel by sea from Dos Bocas to Puerto Progreso to the [Yucatán] Peninsula, and from Dos Bocas to [the ports of] Coatzacoalcos and Veracruz. The entire Gulf,” AMLO said.
Energy Minister Rocío Dahle had previously revealed to Bloomberg Línea that gasoline and diesel from Dos Bocas would be shipped out through three marine mono-buoys, pipelines or pipes to the Yucatán Peninsula or Veracruz.
AMLO added that he will visit the refinery at the end of August to inspect the process and see “if it starts producing by then”.
New Fortress liquefaction plant
AMLO on August 6 presented the first gas liquefaction terminal of US company New Fortress, which has been built in Altamira, in the Gulf coast state ofTamaulipas, in order to send the fuel to the European market.
The project is part of a partnership with state-owned power utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) and will include two more liquefaction plants in Veracruz.
“These are projects that are already underway. This one, for example, does give me time to finish it,” AMLO said, referring to the fact that he will leave office in December 2024 and only see one of the projects completed.
“The other two, maybe one in Lakach, and one in Coatzacoalcos, are still in process,” he said.