Mexico Has More Refining Capacity, So Why Are Fuel Imports Rising

Crude oil futures gained ground on August 18, 2026, with the United States Oil Fund (AMEX:USO) rising 2.91% to 130.29 dollars, sitting near the upper half of its 52 week range of 102.42 to 142.33 and carrying a relative strength reading of 57.21. Behind the daily price tick sits a much bigger story about how far countries like Mexico can reduce their reliance on imported fuel through refining alone, and a curious detour into why people ask whether mexico has more pyramids than egypt when discussing the country's ambitious industrial projects.

What Is Driving Crude Oil Prices Today

The move in USO reflects tightening product markets more than a single headline. Diesel cracks in the United States have jumped to around 85 dollars a barrel in mid August, up sharply from the 54 dollar average seen in June, while gasoline cracks have also stayed elevated. When refined product margins run this hot, buyers of crude oil, including national oil companies that need to feed their own refineries, face tougher choices about whether to export raw crude or process it domestically for a bigger payoff.

Mexico's state oil company, Pemex, sits right in the middle of that tension. The government has pushed Pemex to keep more crude at home and send less to the export market, betting that strong refining margins would make that trade worthwhile. For a few months, it looked like the bet was paying off. Then the numbers reversed.

Pemex's Refining Struggles and Why Comparisons to Mexico's Pyramids Come Up

It might seem strange that a story about oil economics gets tangled up with ancient history, but it happens often when writers try to capture the scale of Mexico's infrastructure ambitions. People searching to see whether mexico has more pyramids than egypt are usually trying to understand just how much large scale construction Mexico has undertaken over the centuries, from Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza to, in a very different sense, the ten billion dollar Dos Bocas refinery. The pyramid comparison and the refinery numbers both speak to a pattern: Mexico builds big, but keeping what it builds running smoothly at full capacity has proven to be the harder task.

In the second quarter of 2026, Mexican refineries processed only about 1 million barrels a day, just 58% of installed capacity, while fuel imports climbed again. That is a step backward from earlier in the year. Clean product imports had fallen from roughly 750,000 barrels a day in 2024 to about 520,000 barrels a day during the first five months of 2026, as refinery runs recovered to around 1.2 million barrels a day between December and March, helped by Dos Bocas ramping up and a new coker at the Tula refinery.

Crude Processing Reversal and Rising Imports

That recovery did not hold. Crude processing began slipping in April and dropped back to about 1.01 million barrels a day by June. Fuel imports moved the other way, climbing to around 620,000 barrels a day in May and 700,000 barrels a day in June. Even at its best point this year, Mexico's refining system used only about two thirds of its roughly 1.75 million barrel a day capacity, excluding the Deer Park refinery in Texas.

Dos Bocas illustrates the gap between what the plant can do on paper and what it delivers day to day. The refinery has reportedly hit its full 340,000 barrel a day nameplate rate on individual days in 2026, yet it averaged only 144,000 barrels a day in the second quarter, about 42% utilization. Since early 2025 it has suffered repeated outages tied to power failures, cogeneration problems, leaks and fires. A January 2026 electrical failure knocked out the coker, catalytic and hydrodesulfurization units and reportedly deferred around 150,000 barrels of crude processing. Salina Cruz has dealt with its own fires and operational setbacks, while Tula, Minatitlan and Salamanca have had smaller, isolated disruptions.

Where Pemex Is Actually Improving

Not everything is going wrong. Tula has become one of the clearer success stories, with utilization climbing from about 66% in the first half of 2025 to roughly 79% a year later, and average processing near 249,000 barrels a day from January through May 2026. Pemex credits part of that gain to the refinery's new delayed coker.

The company is also squeezing more value out of the crude it does process. Combined gasoline, diesel and jet fuel output reached 699,000 barrels a day in the second quarter of 2026, up 9% from 642,000 barrels a day a year earlier, even though crude runs rose only about 3%. Fuel oil output, historically Pemex's weak spot, dropped to 191,000 barrels a day from 222,000 barrels a day, with its yield falling from 22.7% to 18.9%. That shift shows the newer conversion units are doing their job. The unresolved problem is keeping enough crude flowing through the system in the first place.

Financial Pressure Behind the Strategy

Pemex's debt load has fallen since 2020, but the improvement leans heavily on government support rather than operating cash flow, including capital injections, pre capitalized securities and bond repurchases. That dependence on public money, combined with refining reliability that still comes and goes, keeps raising questions about how sustainable the self sufficiency push really is, and whether Mexico ends up paying for imported fuel on top of the billions already spent building capacity that isn't consistently used.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why were the pyramids in Mexico built?

Ancient civilizations across Mexico, including the Maya, Aztec and the builders of Teotihuacan, constructed pyramids primarily as religious and ceremonial structures, often serving as temples, tombs for rulers, or platforms for rituals honoring their gods.

Does Mexico have more pyramids than Egypt?

Yes, by most counts Mexico has significantly more known pyramid structures than Egypt, since ancient Mesoamerican cultures built pyramids across many sites over centuries, while Egypt's pyramids, though larger individually, are fewer in total number.

Is it true that Mexico has more pyramids than Egypt?

It is generally accurate. Archaeologists have identified thousands of pyramid and pyramid like structures across Mexico built by different Mesoamerican civilizations, far outnumbering the roughly one hundred or so pyramids documented in Egypt.

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