Pemex loses franchises, but recovers supply at service stations

Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) has not been able to stop the abandonment of the Pemex brand in the country’s gas stations, but this has not prevented the state company from regaining ground in the distribution of fuels to service stations.

As of September 30, 6,867 service stations operated under the Pemex franchise in Mexico, a figure 3% lower than the number registered at the same cut in 2021, with which this indicator string five years of contractions, according to data revealed by the company in its report for the third quarter of 2022.

This means that, since September 2017 – the last peak of the indicator after the opening of the fuel market – more than 4,800 gas stations have left the Pemex brand.

This is a cumulative drop of more than 41%, reflecting the migration to other commercial identities such as BP, Total, Shell, G500, Hidrosina, OXXO Gas, Repsol, Exxon, Gulf, just to name a few.

However, for Pemex this decline has been much less in terms of distribution, since the state company supplied 11,591 gas stations at the end of the third quarter of 2022.

Of these, 6,867 are service stations that remain under the Pemex franchise, 3,665 are points of sale that have other brands, but sell products from the state company, and another 1,059 are gas stations from other franchises but that sell Pemex products under a brand sub-licensing scheme.

The grand total of 11,591 supplied service stations is, in fact, 1.3% higher than the number registered as of September 30, 2021 and 3% higher than the same cut in 2020, the year in which Pemex registered its floor in the number of customers- gas stations, with 11,210 points of sale.

The foregoing means that the company has managed to recover 381 clients in the last two years, according to the information reported to the investing public.

According to figures from the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) until October 2022 there were 13,079 service stations in Mexico, which implies that Pemex’s participation in the supply of said points of sale is 88.6 percent.

Pemex’s recovery in terms of points of sale supplied is consistent with a higher volume of fuel distributed by the company.

As of September, the state company’s gasoline sales rose 20.9% year-on-year to 672,906 barrels per day, while diesel sales rose no less than 49.5% to 301,401 barrels per day.

Behind these increases is the expansion of Pemex’s refining activity, but also of its import orders.

In the case of gasoline, production rose 17.5% to 267,013 barrels per day and imports increased 25.1% to 420,135 barrels per day. As for diesel, production grew 29.5% to 147,717 barrels per day and external orders rose 60.7% to 170,135 barrels per day.

This displaced private companies in import activities. In gasoline, private participation in imports fell from 33% to 23% of the total, while in diesel, the drop was from 49% to 34, according to calculations based on data from the Ministry of Energy.

octavio.amador@eleconomista.mx