Pemex Reports Nearly $10 bln Q3 Loss

Mexico's state-run oil company Pemex reported a steep third-quarter loss on Wednesday of 167.5 billion pesos ($9.9 billion), well over double the 60 billion pesos loss in the same period last year, hurt by low oil prices and a weaker Mexican peso.

 

The massive loss was Pemex's 12th consecutive quarter in the red. Accumulated losses during the first nine months of the year totaled 352.6 billion pesos ($20.8 billion), more than double the loss for the same period the previous year.

 

Pemex said in a statement that total sales for the July to September period were 313 billion pesos, with earnings before earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of 119 billion pesos.

 

The company, which is struggling to turn around a decade-long slump in output, said production totaled 2.26 million barrels of oil a day and 5.5 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas during the period, which it said marked an increase of 1.8 percent over output levels during the second quarter.

 

Pemex imports about half of the gasoline consumed in Mexico, and the weakening Mexican currency added to the peso costs of those purchases.

 

Pemex expects crude oil production to remain near current levels next year, at between 2.2 million and 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2016, Deputy Energy Minister Lourdes Melgar said last month.

 

Output has dropped by nearly a third since hitting peak production of 3.4 million bpd in 2004. A slump in oil output this year has weighed on growth in Latin America's second-largest economy.

 

Mexico's Congress finalized a sweeping energy overhaul last year, which ended the decades-long monopoly enjoyed by Pemex and opened the sector to private producers in the hopes of luring new investment into the flagging sector.