Pemex’s fertilizer production rises 15.3%

Pemex‘s fertilizer production rose 15.3% from 2021 to 2022, reaching 745,100 tons, according to information from the company itself.

Within this amount, 277,800 tons corresponded to ammonia and the remaining 467,300 tons to carbon dioxide.

At year-on-year rates, ammonia production increased 13.9 percent and carbon dioxide production rose 16.1 percent.

In 2022, the value of domestic sales of Pemex’s fertilizer segment increased 96.6 percent, from 4,956.8 million pesos in 2021 to 9,745.6 million pesos in 2022.

This result is explained by two factors, the first is the increase in sales volume and the second is related to the reference prices of ammonia, which in April 2022 reached an all-time high, as a consequence of the behavior of the natural gas market.

In addition, the fertilizer segment invested Ps. 75 million in capital expenditures in 2022 and has budgeted Ps. 3.148 billion for capital expenditures in 2023.

Fertilizer production

Effective January 1, 2021, Pemex Fertilizantes merged with Pemex Transformación Industrial.

Therefore, the fertilizer segment operated through the state-owned productive subsidiary Pemex Fertilizantes until December 31, 2020, and operates through the state-owned productive subsidiary Pemex Transformación Industrial as of January 1, 2021 as a line of business.

The fertilizer business integrates the ammonia production chain.

For the fertilizer business line in 2023, Pemex reported that it will continue to leverage the installed capacity of the secondary petrochemical units, focusing on their operational reliability to capture the value generated by these chains.

Pemex Transformación Industrial processes wet natural gas to produce dry natural gas, ethane, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and other natural gas liquids, along with products from the aromatic derivatives chain such as toluene, benzene and xylene.

In 2022, total sour natural gas processing capacity remained at 4,523.0 million cubic feet per day.

Natural gas

At the same time, Pemex processed 2,770.2 million cubic feet per day of wet natural gas, of which 2,392.0 million cubic feet per day was wet sour gas and 378.2 million cubic feet per day was wet sweet gas.

This figure is 5.4% higher than the 2,628.2 million cubic feet per day we processed in 2021, due to greater availability of sour wet gas in the southeast region by Pemex Exploración y Producción, resulting from higher gas production from the Quesqui Field of approximately 500 million cubic feet per day.

In 2022, Pemex produced 160,800 barrels per day of natural gas liquids, a decrease of 6.0% compared to 171,100 barrels per day in 2021.

Also in 2022, Pemex produced 2,279.8 million cubic feet per day of dry gas (which is natural gas with a methane content greater than 90.0%), an increase of 9.6% compared to the 2,080.3 million cubic feet per day produced in 2021.