MEXICO CITY, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) — Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday that 16.8 billion U.S. dollars were invested in a new refinery operating in southeast Mexico, with most of the funding derived from combating fuel theft.
At his regular daily press conference, the Mexican president said the Olmeca refinery, located near the port of Dos Bocas in his native state of Tabasco, is already producing about 150,000 barrels of gasoline per day since production was launched on Aug. 3.
According to the government, the refinery, one of the main infrastructure projects of the Lopez Obrador administration, is expected to produce 340,000 barrels of fuel per day by mid-September.
“We are going to be producing, in this refinery alone, 20 percent of all the gasoline we consume,” Lopez Obrador told reporters, noting that a new refinery had not been built in Mexico since 1980.
Lopez Obrador and his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, visited the refinery over the weekend to see the start of production.
Fuel theft, known as “huachicol” in Mexico, was so pervasive that up to 80,000 barrels of gasoline were being siphoned off daily, according to Lopez Obrador. Shortly after the president took office in December 2018, the Mexican government launched a crackdown on fuel theft.
