MEXICO CITY, April 29 (Reuters) - Mexico's new Olmeca

refinery is ready to restart production, Mexican President

Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday, denying that a temporary

outage had been caused by sabotage of its catalytic cracking

unit.

Located at the port of Dos Bocas, the Olmeca refinery is

still far from meeting the gasoline and diesel production goals

set by Sheinbaum's predecessor.

"It's not like that," the president replied to a question

during a press conference regarding alleged sabotage at state

energy company Pemex, but gave no further details.

The catalytic cracking unit is an important

gasoline-producing part of the refinery that uses fluidized

catalyst to crack heavy hydrocarbon molecules into gasoline

molecules.

Sheinbaum said she would ask a Pemex official to report on

what happened.

"It's not about the refinery suddenly not working. It's a

smaller issue," she said. "It was producing 100,000 barrels a

day and is about to start up again. There's nothing serious."

Pemex did not respond to a request for information about the

events at the refinery, the date of any incidents, or the

current levels of production.

The refinery only processed 6,797 bpd in February and none

in January when the company reported problems with

higher-than-usual contents of salt and water in the crude oil

Pemex pumps. It has a capacity to process 340,000 bpd. Since

June 2024, processing has been marginal.

Reuters reported last week that Pemex exported two shipments

of ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) processed in Olmeca because

the infrastructure needed to distribute the much-needed motor

fuel that Mexico imports is not yet ready.