PEMEX entered the first quarter of 2026 in a critical situation. The company reported losses of MXN 46 billion, financial debt approaching USD 79 billion, and liquid hydrocarbon production of just 1.65 million barrels per day, well below official targets. These challenges were compounded by accidents, fires, and spills at key facilities, reflecting not only financial fragility but also operational deterioration and shortcomings in industrial safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These results undermine the logic that dominated between 2018 and 2024: the idea that restoring PEMEX’s full control over production, allocations, and budgeting, while reducing its tax burden and transferring public resources to the company, would be sufficient to rescue it within six years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The accumulated government support was enormous, including tax relief and foregone petroleum revenues. Nevertheless, production continued to decline, and the company became increasingly dependent on the state, with reduced operational capacity and no reversal of the structural decline of its producing fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The model promoted during the previous administration sought to recentralize the energy sector around PEMEX. Oil licensing rounds were suspended, open competition was curtailed, and the state oil company was positioned as the cornerstone of energy sovereignty. Although the Shared Profit Duty was reduced and government transfers increased to support debt payments, refining activities, and infrastructure projects, the productivity of that support remained low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PEMEX failed to increase production or improve profitability and ultimately emerged with larger liabilities, growing debts to suppliers, and greater dependence on fiscal support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The administration of Claudia Sheinbaum inherited a financially exhausted company and began pursuing a different approach. The 2024 constitutional reform transformed PEMEX into a State Public Enterprise and eliminated part of the regulatory architecture established in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new strategy seeks to prioritize liquidity, refinancing, and financial restructuring through a new fiscal regime, mixed contracts, and extraordinary government support. However, the results have also proven insufficient. Production remains below target levels, and the company continues to post losses even in an international environment characterized by relatively high oil prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this stage, the problem has ceased to be exclusively corporate and has begun to affect the sovereign itself. Growing transfers to PEMEX have reduced the state’s net oil income and increased pressure on Mexico’s public finances. Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P have explicitly linked the country’s fiscal deterioration to the government’s continuing support for the state oil company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While major international oil companies took advantage of the recent period of higher oil prices to generate record profits, PEMEX continued to lose money due to its debt burden, low productivity, and operational challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The central conclusion is that rescuing PEMEX only makes sense if the objective is to restore public value for Mexico rather than simply preserve the company as a political symbol. Achieving this would require establishing clear metrics for profitability, production, and safety; conditioning any fiscal support on measurable performance; separating profitable business segments from those that destroy value; restoring competition and credible technical regulation; and prioritizing maintenance and industrial safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The model that provided PEMEX with financial resources, tax relief, regulatory control, and unrestricted political support has already been tested. The result was not energy sovereignty, but rather growing pressure on the country’s sovereign credit profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n