Pemex contractors are waiting months to get paid due to pressure from the government to slow spending.

According to a report by the news agency Bloomberg, the state oil company has delayed some payments for as long as seven months.

Oil industry sources told Bloomberg that President López Obrador is determined to end the year with a government-wide surplus and payments from Pemex to its suppliers have slowed as a result.

Goods and services required to keep oil wells running are consequently becoming scarcer, complicating efforts to make good on the president’s promise to revive the state oil company, which is saddled with more than US $100 billion in debt.

One company owed money by Pemex is Marinsa de México, a service provider to offshore drilling platforms. Director of strategy Sergio Suárez Toriello told Bloomberg that the company is owed 155 million pesos (US $7.9 million).

It has been waiting seven months for approximately 47 million pesos of that amount while the remaining debt is three to four months old.

An international service supply company has also been waiting months to get paid, a person familiar with the unnamed firm’s finances told Bloomberg.

Wilbur Matthews, founder of Vaquero Global Investment, a Pemex bonds trader, described the situation in Mexico’s oil industry as an “absolute train wreck.”

Pemex “can’t get out of their own way to make a change that’s going to improve upon it,” he said. “At some point, people are just going to realize that they are a terrible client.”

Source: Bloomberg (en)