Mexico's Pemex this month delivered its very first fuel export cargo from its brand-new Olmeca refinery to India, an indication of progress after several delays and spiraling expenses, according to shipping data and industry sources.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose term ends on Sept. 30, staked part of his tradition on the 340,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Dos Bocas by promising that it would wean Mexico off pricey motor fuel imports.

Pemex packed around 112,000 barrels of petroleum coke from Olmeca on the vessel Ocean Royal at the port of Dos Bocas on Sept. 11, according to information from ship-tracking service Kpler.

It then got a bigger cargo of the same industrial fuel from Corpus Christi in Texas on Sept. 15, the data showed.

Petroleum coke is used in power plants or in the production of different items such as glass or steel.

Olmeca's cargo is heading for the port of Dahej, an industrial center in India's west-coast state of Gujarat, home to chemical and petrochemical business. The freight should reach its destination by the end of October, according to Kpler.

Neither the very first exports from the new refinery nor the destination and volume of the deal have formerly been reported.

Pemex has actually done another deal to sell petroleum coke from Olmeca, among the sources stated, and is also producing fuel oil and asphalt there however no gas.

Pemex did not react to a request for remark.

The exports offer an important turning point in efforts to start-up Olmeca, however disappoint government guarantees that the refinery would be working at full capability by now.

A picture of the refinery control system, shown Reuters in late August, showed some plants at the refinery were working separately however facing concerns with their interconnection.

Since late September, the refinery is still trialing private units and is in the process of ramping up its coker, a system that processes residual oil into petroleum coke or feedstocks for motor fuels, 2 of the sources stated.

A few of the systems have actually not reached optimum configuration and some are not yet operating in sync with each other, they said.

The outbound president inaugurated Olmeca in July 2022 in his home state Tabasco, billing it as essential to energy self-sufficiency for Mexico.

Hold-ups to the venture, whose expenses have more than doubled to $ 16.8 billion, leave it to his successor Claudia Sheinbaum to turn that dream into reality.

Olmeca began diesel production from petroleum in July, according to Pemex. However the output is yet to satisfy specs for domestic or global sales, two sources near to the refinery stated.

Formerly, Pemex had actually further processed ultra-low sulfur diesel from diesel that was currently produced at another refinery.

Pemex said in late August that the refinery had further processed 65,046 bpd of petroleum in July, producing 21,511 bpd of diesel and 8,775 bpd of petroleum coke.

(source: Reuters)