VLO - Pemex platform fire kills five cuts oil production by a quarter

Pemex says a fire at an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico killed at least five people and slashed crude oil production by 421K bbl/day, or ~25% of the company's overall total. CEO Octavio Romero says there is no date yet for resuming production, but it could take days and exports "surely" will come in lower this month. The platform is part of Pemex's main shallow-water production complex Ku Maloob-Zaap, which represented more than 40% of the company's 1.77M bbl/day total crude output in June. The production outage may affect supplies to Gulf refiners, which depend on Mexican oil for 38% of the foreign crude they process; according to Bloomberg, refiners including Valero Energy (NYSE:VLO), Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) are among the largest U.S. buyers this year. Prices rose today for Canadian heavy oils, which are an alternative to Mexican Maya in the supply to U.S. refiners.

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Pemex platform fire kills five, cuts oil production by a quarter