Pemex Annual Loss Reaches $2.6 Billion Despite State Support

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Petroleos Mexicanos posted an annual loss of 45.2 billion pesos ($2.6 billion) as President Claudia Sheinbaum’s massive financial support for the debt-laden company has so far failed to lift crude production.

Pemex posted a fourth-quarter net loss of 155.2 million pesos, compared with a 350-billion peso loss a year earlier, according to a statement Friday. It was the company’s second straight quarterly loss.

Sheinbaum, who took office in October 2024, has pumped upward of $40 billion into the company to help it cope with huge debt payments, high payroll costs and inefficiencies in its loss-making refining business. She’s also pushing for private investment to revive the nation’s aging oil and gas fields, with the aim of making Pemex self-sufficient by 2027.

Those efforts, however, have yet to revive oil output, which has slumped to around half what it was two decades ago. Crude and condensate production fell 1.3% to 1.65 million barrels per day at the end of 2025, the statement showed. Natural gas production, however, rose 7.4% to 3.88 billion cubic feet per day.

There are some signs, however, that the company is slowly turning around.

The $2.6 billion loss for 2025 pales in comparison to the company’s $30 billion loss in 2024, which was the largest in recent history.

And while few major companies besides billionaire Carlos Slim’s Grupo Carso have come forward to announce projects to help revive production, Pemex has signed at least six other joint venture contracts. Three more are still being negotiated, executives said Friday.

Those partners include Mexican companies such as Consorcio 5M del Golfol, Geolis, Petrolera Miahuapan and GSM Bronco, according to a company presentation Friday.

Sheinbaum’s financial support is also beginning to make a dent in the company’s massive debts. Pemex’s total reported financial debt was $85.2 billion at the end of 2025, its lowest in 11 years.

Her financial support has freed up cash for the company’s production and refining arms. The company is allocating a total of 291.4 billion pesos for capital expenditures this year, according to the filing.

While Sheinbaum said in January that government financial assistance for the company may continue next year, Pemex doesn’t foresee any need in the near future for selling bonds, refinancing or other liability management, executives said on Friday.

Pemex has received at least $41 billion in financial support for debt payments under Sheinbaum, including $12 billion in the form of pre-capitalized securities, or P-Caps, a $13 billion fund from local development banks, and $14 billion from sovereign issuance that funded debt buybacks. The government will also transfer to Pemex more than $14 billion for debt payments and other obligations in 2026.

The company also returned to local debt markets earlier this month, raising around $1.8 billion via the sale of instruments that will be used to pay obligations this year.

Still, investors are worried about Pemex’s late payments to suppliers, which stood around $24 billion at the end of last year. The company has about 60 billion pesos left in its Banobras investment vehicle to pay obligations to suppliers in 2026, Pemex finance chief Alberto Jimenez said Friday.

Mexico is also weighing increasing fracking to boost gas output and wean itself off importing fuel from the US. The country has an estimated 545 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas resources, the sixth largest reserve in the world, which could help Pemex reach its goal of lifting gas output by almost one-third by 2030.

Read More: Mexico Reluctantly Turns to Fracking to Ease Reliance on US Gas

The company’s refining business, meanwhile, is showing progress. Gasoline and diesel imports fell to a 16-year low last year as Pemex’s refineries operated at the highest rates in a decade. The country’s largest refinery, Dos Bocas, is finally ramping up after several false starts since its inauguration nearly four years ago.