MEXICO CITY, July 19 - Mexican state-owned oil company

Pemex will reduce its fuel imports in September to some 52,000

barrels per day (bpd) and to 20,000 bpd in the first quarter of

2025 as it ramps up production of its own refined products, the

firm's Chief Executive Octavio Romero said on Friday.

Romero said Pemex imports for the first half of 2024

amounted to some 498,000 bpd, but that the figures would go down

with the starting-up of the new Olmeca refinery in the days to

come, as well as a coking plant in Tula in the last quarter of

the year.

"In the first quarter of 2025, with the full entry of

the Tula coking plant, we will have achieved 98% of

self-sufficiency in fuels," the executive said during a regular

morning press conference alongside President Andres Manuel Lopez

Obrador.

Romero added that once a new coking plant is in place in

Salina Cruz, a seaport on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca state, the

company will be "above the national demand" for fuels and will

have a surplus.

Lopez Obrador, a resource nationalist, promised the

country's "energy sovereignty" by the end of his six-year term.

However, Pemex and his government have several times

failed to meet their goals, most recently with

the new Olmeca refinery experiencing delays

, despite pressure to ready it before the end of Lopez

Obrador's term.