Peru’s Crude Gains Share in U.S. as Mexican Exports Slump

U.S. refiners are turning to rare niche crude grades from Latin America to fill the gap left by declining imports from Mexico, according to vessel-tracking data.

Last year, U.S. imports of crude from Mexico fell to their lowest in decades, per data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Mexico’s state oil giant Pemex has been struggling with a decline in production, while it has also left more volumes of crude oil at home to be refined domestically at the new refinery that former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wanted built.

As Mexican output and exports to the U.S. fall, American refiners are importing more volumes of heavy crude from South America, per tanker-tracking data from Kpler and LSEG cited by Reuters.

One of the rarer crudes is a niche grade produced in Peru in the Amazonian forest and transported on the Amazon for export from Brazil. The grade, Bretaña, is heavy sweet with minimal amounts of metals.

Bretaña has won customers in the U.S., trade sources have told Reuters.

One cargo of Bretaña from Brazil’s port city of Manaus has already arrived in Houston this year, according to the ship-tracking data compiled by Reuters.

The tanker Radiant Pride shipped around 300,000 barrels of Bretaña and discharged on January 2.

Cargoes of Bretaña, whose production began in 2018, arrived on the U.S. West Coast last year, too. According to data from Kpler, one cargo discharged at a Marathon Petroleum terminal and another at PBF Energy.

“Given the drop in heavy sour crude from Mexico to the U.S. Gulf Coast over the last year, we are starting to see new heavy grades being pulled in to backfill this loss – this is a trend we only expect to continue,” Kpler analyst Matt Smith told Reuters, commenting on the growing attractiveness of niche South American heavy crude grades.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com