Pemex reached the first quarter of 2026 in a critical situation, reporting losses of 46 billion pesos, financial debt close to 79 billion dollars, and liquid hydrocarbon production of barely 1.65 million barrels per day, well below the official target. Added to this were accidents, fires, and spills at key facilities, reflecting not only financial fragility, but also operational deterioration and deterioration in industrial safety.
These results dismantle the logic that prevailed between 2018 and 2024, the idea that it was enough to return absolute control over production, assignments, and budget to Pemex; in addition to reducing its fiscal burden and transferring public resources to it, in order to rescue it in six years.
The accumulated government support was enormous, between fiscal benefits and foregone oil revenues. However, production continued to fall and the company ended up more dependent on the State, with less operational capacity and without reversing the structural decline of its fields.
Pemex Inherited Liabilities and Losses Despite Fiscal Support
The model promoted during the previous administration sought to recentralize the energy sector around Pemex. Oil rounds were suspended, open competition was halted, and the state-owned oil company was favored as the axis of energy sovereignty. Although the Profit-Sharing Duty was reduced and transfers for debt, refining, and infrastructure increased, the productivity of the support was low.
Pemex failed to increase production or improve profitability, and ended up with greater liabilities, debts to suppliers, and fiscal dependence.
The administration of Claudia Sheinbaum inherited a financially exhausted company and began a different shift. The 2024 constitutional reform transformed Pemex into a State Public Enterprise and eliminated part of the regulatory architecture created in 2013.
The new approach seeks to prioritize liquidity, refinancing, and financial restructuring through a new fiscal regime, mixed contracts, and extraordinary government support. However, the results have not been sufficient either, production remains below targets and the company continues to report losses even in an international environment of high oil prices.
At this point, the problem ceased to be exclusively a business problem and began to affect the sovereign. Growing transfers to Pemex have reduced the State’s net oil revenue and put pressure on Mexico’s public finances. Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P have explicitly linked the country’s fiscal deterioration to the permanent support for the oil company.
While major international oil companies took advantage of the recent upward cycle in crude oil prices to generate record profits, Pemex continued losing money because of its debt, low productivity, and operational problems.
Saving Pemex Requires Public Value, Not Political Symbolism
The central conclusion is that saving Pemex only makes sense if the objective is to restore public value for Mexico and not simply to preserve the company as a political symbol. That would imply establishing clear metrics for:
- Profitability, production, and safety.
- Conditioning any fiscal support.
- Segmenting profitable businesses from those that destroy value.
- Recovering competition and credible technical regulation.
- Prioritizing maintenance and industrial safety.
The model that gave Pemex resources, fiscal relief, regulatory control, and unrestricted political support has already been tested, and the result was not energy sovereignty, but growing pressure on the country’s sovereign rating.
This article was originally published by La Prensa OEM.
Date: June 5, 2026
Link: https://oem.com.mx/la-prensa/analisis/opinion-por-paul-alejandro-sanchez-30370677 [Online]