Mexico City: Pemex boosted its future balance sheets with a hefty deal by its PMI affiliate to supply 5 million barrels of oil to Hyundai Oilbank over the coming six months.
Under the deal Mexico’s state oil firm will provide mostly heavy Maya crude as well as some Isthmus light crude to the South Korean firm’s refinery in Daesan.
Hyundai Oilbank, a major producer and distributor of oil and refined products in its own country, is part of the Hyundai Group conglomerate.
This transaction extends a trading relationship that had seen Pemex make irregular shipments amounting to about 6m barrels already this year.
Signed in Mexico City by the head of PMI, Jose Manuel Carrera, and Hyundai Oilbank’s CEO Moon Jong-bak, the deal includes an option for an additional oil shipment of undetermined volume.
Pemex has been enduring a rocky patch, like many firms in the oil business, in these times of plunging prices. Only a day earlier it had cancelled its third rig contract in the space of a week with American firm Paragon Offshore.
In longer-term planning, Pemex has been trying to wean itself off too much dependence on US business and one of its main alternative markets has been South Korea. By the end of this year the company expects to double crude exports to the Land of the Morning Calm, so this new deal falls perfectly into that strategy.
Last year, Mexico opened its energy markets to foreign investment for the first time in more than 70 years.
