Mexican president: New refinery is 'a dream come true'

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The office of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that the country's new Gulf coast refinery is “a dream come true."

López Obrador “inaugurated” the partially finished Olmeca refinery in Dos Bocas, a city in his home state of Tabasco.

The project, when finished, is expected to cost as much as $12 billion, well above original estimates of $9 billion.

In 2021, Mexico agreed to buy Shell’s 50% share in the jointly owned Deer Park refinery near Houston, Texas for about $600 million. The two refineries would have similar capacities, leading to questions about the much larger investment in building a new refinery.

The new refinery is part of López Obrador’s startegy of making Mexico self-sufficient in gasoline, which it has long imported. He noted Mexico had not built a new refinery since the 1970s.

The eventual opening of the plant comes as many energy companies are trying to exit the historically low-margin refining businesses, as demand for renewable energy increases.

"We did not pay attention to the song of the sirens, the voices that predicted, perhaps in good faith, that the oil era was over, and that electric cars and renewable energy was arriving massively," López Obrador said.