Olmeca refinery will produce 170,000 barrels per day until the end of 2023: Nahle

the new refinery olmec in Paraíso, Tabasco, near the Port of of mouthswill conclude the start-up of its first production stage, with the process of half of the originally committed installed capacity, that is, with 170,000 barrels of crude oil per day until the end of 2023, as confirmed by the Ministry of Energy.

In the presentation that the Secretary of Energy, dew nahlecarried out before the Senate last week – and which after its projection was later reserved without being shared with the public – shows that the last of the testing processes will last until December 2023, despite the fact that the refining center that will be operated by Petróleos Mexicans (Pemex) was inaugurated from July 2022.

About, Nahle He acknowledged in front of the Upper House that the so-called inauguration was carried out ahead of time, although it corresponded to the end of the first stage that was the conclusion of the foundation of all the civil works in this property of the federal Government in the town of Tabasco.

However, at the inauguration event, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that the first barrel of fuel would be obtained by the end of 2022, to which analysts and sources close to the subject, and even the contractor workers themselves on site, responded For El Economista, this would be impossible, since at that time less than half of the installation of equipment was completely disconnected from each other.

In the past week, dew nahle assured that there is progress of more than 96% in the construction and connection of the refinery, which will receive its first gas discharges this year through the pipeline networks that have been interconnected since July of last year.

However, the work has an expense of more than 12,000 million dollars, when it was originally promised that it would not exceed 8,000 million dollars.

“I took on the challenge that the alternate works,” Nahle said in response to the claims of the work’s cost overrun, “I assume my responsibility and, in the end, at the end of this six-year term, the results will speak for me… in the end The facts will be the accounts and that is what I am going to stick to,” said the energy minister.

Timeline

The new one Olmec refinery It will have an installed capacity of 340,000 barrels per day of crude oil processing, which will continue under construction after the start of the so-called “first production stage”, which will be reached at the end of this six-year term, with a process of half of this volume. .

According to the sheet shown by the Energy Minister last week, from September of this year to March 2023, the mechanical integration and start-up tests of the different machines that are already on the site will continue.

From March to June of next year, the tests and start-up of the machines for the first refining stage will continue to obtain materials on a small scale, even in the early stages of the distillation process, without reaching the elaboration of light fuels.

It will be from July to November that tests will be carried out on the most sophisticated machinery, to obtain gasoline and diesel in December of next year.

karol.garcia@eleconomista.mx

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