Pemex Q1: Company posts first quarterly profit in five years

Pemex
Pemex reported the its first quarterly profit since 2012. Reuters photo by Edgard Garrido.

Pemex revenue up 55 per cent

On Wednesday, Pemex posted a first quarter net profit of 87.9 billion pesos ($4.7 billion), which is the first quarterly profit reported by Mexico’s state-run company since 2012.

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Petroleos Mexicanos says higher crude prices and increased sales were factors in the profit, despite decreasing output.

Revenue at Pemex was up 55 per cent to 349 billion pesos, according to the company’s filing with the Mexican stock exchange.

Reuters reports first-quarter crude production was 2.018 million b/d, down 9.5 per cent from the average output of 2.23 million b/d in the first quarter of 2017. During the same period last year, the company posted a loss of 62 billion pesos.

Since 2004 when the company hit peak output of 3.4 million b/d, production at Pemex has been dropping.

The slide has left the government of Mexico struggling to make up for the lost funds.  A few years ago, Pemex contributed over a third of the government’s revenue.  Now, the company makes up less than one-fifth of federal revenue.

In 2014, the Mexican government announced sweeping energy reform which ended Pemex’s decades-long production monopoly and saw the first-ever competitive oil auctions and joint venture partnerships.