⛽ Pemex

Can Mexico's new leader save Pemex from collapse?

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Latinometrics
February 20, 2025 • Reading Time: 2 minutes

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Drive down a street in Mexico and you’ll see one logo again and again and again.

Petróleos Mexicanos, more commonly known by its official portmanteau Pemex, is Mexico’s state-owned oil company and one of Latin America’s largest and most well-known enterprises. It was created in 1938 upon the complete nationalization of Mexico’s oil sector by President Lázaro Cárdenas, the most popular Mexican leader of the twentieth century.

Cardenas initially appropriated the local oil holdings of foreign multinationals owing to his close relationship with his country’s labor movement. But the result is that he created a behemoth, a sprawling Fortune 500 firm which in good years has powered the country’s growth with taxes on revenue approximating $100B in 2023.

We are not in good years.

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