For years, Mexico has been a major fuel buyer from the United States. Then the government built a new refinery that cost $20 billion, which was planned to boost the country’s energy independence. It seems it has finally started to do just that—and fuel imports are on the decline.
The Olmeca refinery, also called Dos Bocas, was the centerpiece of Mexico’s previous administration, with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the helm and plans for an even greater role for state-owned Pemex in Mexico’s energy system. The project was announced as completed back in 2022 and was the first refinery to be built in Mexico in 40 years. Not only that, but Dos Bocas was going to be the largest refinery in Mexico, with a nameplate capacity of some 340,000 barrels daily.
The project took longer to complete and gobbled up a lot more money than its initial $8-billion budget, but finally it began commercial production last year. Also finally, it is ramping up to its full capacity and has started to affect fuel imports.
Bloomberg reported this week that U.S. fuel exports to Mexico had declined to the lowest in 16 years in 2025 as the long-delayed new refining capacity started producing gasoline and diesel. Yet it wasn’t just Dos Bocas. According to Pemex reports, all refineries that the company operates were producing more fuels last year—run rates were the highest since 2015.
Dos Bocas, however, has been the biggest contributor to the overall increase in refining output as it finally ramps up closer to its maximum capacity. Last year, it was uncertain when this would happen. Gasoline production was hovering at less than 100,000 bpd, despite capacity for 170,000 barrels daily, and it even fell below 50,000 barrels daily in August. But since then, refining rates have been rising, and as of December, the refinery was operating at 77.5% of installed capacity, per Bloomberg.
This is in line with the Obrador administration’s original plans, but it is bad news for U.S. refiners, which have been both buyers of heavy crude from Mexico and sellers of refined products made with this crude. Now, the dynamics are changing.
“US refiners need heavy crude, and the US is rapidly losing Mexican and Canadian oil,” energy consultant John Padilla told Bloomberg. “Oil from Venezuela can’t fill the gaps as quickly as Trump would hope.”
Indeed, Mexico’s crude oil exports have been on the slide amid the refiner revival. Between 2020 and 2025, the daily average fell from some 1.1 million barrels to 503,000 barrels as of December last year. Not only that, but in that month, outbound shipments of Pemex’s flagship grade, Maya, dropped to 253,000 barrels, which was down a sizable 86% from 2020, commodity analyst Natalia Katona reported earlier this month. Still, the average run rates of Mexico’s seven refineries remain much below the nameplate maximum, she noted, with that maximum at 1.98 million barrels daily and actual run rates at 1.14 million barrels in November last year, which was the highest in ten years. The figure may be much lower than the maximum, but it is an improvement on past run rates, which tended to be below 50% of capacity utilization across refineries.
