MEXICO CITY, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Production at a new

refinery owned and operated by Mexico's state-run oil company

Pemex will meet a fifth of the country's motor fuel needs within

two weeks, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday.

Production from the Olmeca refinery, located at the Gulf

Coast port of Dos Bocas, has been delayed multiple times since

its symbolic inauguration in 2022. The facility, a signature

infrastructure project of Lopez Obrador, has been pitched as

crucial to the outgoing president's drive to make Mexico

self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel.

The refinery's cost has more than doubled to nearly $17

billion.

"Yesterday this refinery produced 10% of all the gasoline we

consume daily and I hope that in a week, in 15 days, it will be

producing 20% of all the gasoline we consume in the country,"

Lopez Obrador said in his daily press conference.

Over the weekend, officials said the Olmeca refinery will be

processing close to its full capacity of 340,000 barrels per day

(bpd) from Aug. 21 and will produce 175,000 bpd of gasoline and

130,000 bpd of diesel.

The refinery was processing some 170,000 bpd of crude over

the weekend, Mexican officials said on Sunday during an event at

the refinery.

Despite being a crude oil producer, Mexico imports most of

its motor fuels due to longstanding inefficiencies at its

domestic refineries.

Lopez Obrador, who has sought to strengthen the finances of

debt-laden Pemex, promised shortly after taking office in late

2018 that the refinery would be constructed in a record time of

three years.