(Bloomberg) -- Mexico will transfer 136 billion pesos ($6.7 billion) to state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos to cover debt payments in 2025, according to the budget proposal presented to Congress on Friday.
The driller’s proposed budget for next year totals 464 billion pesos, with an estimated surplus of 249 billion pesos, according to the document. The cash injection will be used to pay debt taken with the market and with banks.
Mexico also expects the company’s oil output to reach 1.89 million barrels per day next year, with an average oil cost of $57.80 per barrel. Oil exports are forecast at 892,000 barrels per day, the budget showed.
The cash injection comes as President Claudia Sheinbaum looks to continue state support for the oil driller and refiner that is saddled by a nearly $100 billion debt burden. The company has around $9 billion in debt coming due next year and roughly $13 billion in 2026, when maturities will peak.
Pemex’s bonds fell across the curve on Friday, leading losses among Latin American peers, as traders assessed Mexico’s budget proposal and its planned support for the driller. Notes due in 2047 were down 1.2 cents as of 1:00 p.m. New York.
“The market was expecting the announcement of something more comprehensive,” said Carlos de Sousa, an emerging market debt portfolio manager at Vontobel Asset Management. “But so far it’s looking like a continuation of the same policies,” he said, adding that his expectation remains for a more comprehensive debt plan to be announced further down the line.
The cash transfer is an extension of former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s support for Pemex. AMLO, as the former president is known, granted as much as $80 billion over the course of his term via capital injections and tax breaks. Before leaving office, he said that continuing the transfers to the company was in the national interest.
The draft budget added that the Dos Bocas refinery, one of Lopez Obrador’s landmark projects, has an objective of reaching a refining capacity of 255,000 barrels per day of gasoline in 2025. As of last month, it was not producing gasoline.
Mexico will also transfer 85 billion pesos (about $4.2 billion) to state utility Comision Federal de Electricidad, about the same amount in real terms allocated in 2024, according to the document.
--With assistance from Vinícius Andrade, Maya Averbuch and Alex Vasquez.
(Updates with Pemex’s total budget figure in second paragraph)
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