Pemex fire scorches upstream ambitions

Hopes that national crude production will eclipse pre-pandemic levels look distant after platform blaze in the Gulf of Mexico

A major fire at Mexico’s largest offshore crude production complex, Ku-Maloob-Zaap (KMZ), shut in c.23pc of national output in late August, casting doubt on the government’s ability to meet its year-end production goal of 1.8mn bl/d. The shallow-water KMZ complex is responsible for 40.9pc of Mexico’s output. State oil company Pemex suffered a gas pipeline explosion at the site only a month before, August’s fire being the latest in a string of operating accidents for the NOC. “It was a severe fire with multiple causalities,” says Andres Armijos, head of Latin America at consultancy Welligence Energy Analytics. “It is too early to tell the reasons for the occurrence, but it comes only weeks af