Photo: almomento.mx

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF    

Despite the fact that one day earlier his government’s Finance Undersecretary Arturo Herrera told the Financial Times in London that construction of the Dos Bocas refinery in the southeastern state of Tabasco had been put on hold, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on Wednesday, March 13, said that the project would proceed as planned.

“There has been a misunderstanding,” AMLO said during his daily early morning press conference.

“This is not a case of contradiction or confrontation. We are a team.”

The president said that the $2.5 billion that had been allocated this year to the construction of the refinery will not be re-allotted to increase oil production and expand exploration for the state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), as Herrera had said in an interview with the Financial Times.

Over the course of the last 15 years, Pemex’s output has dropped by more than 50 percent, to just 1.64 million barrels a day, and the company has the largest debt of any oil corporation worldwide, more than $106 billion.

AMLO also said that the refinery will be completed and operational within the next three years, as he had originally promised.