Where She Goes – For Gulf Coast Refined Products, It’s Down to Mexico by Truck, Rail, Ship and Pipe

U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to Mexico have been mostly rising the past 15 years as Mexican demand for refined products stabilized, the utilization of south-of-the-border refineries sagged, Covid hit and, most recently, Pemex — the state-owned oil and gas company — started bringing its new Dos Bocas refinery online. Over that same decade and a half, the Mexican government’s policy on the import-related roles of Pemex and private companies has zigged and zagged, complicating and ultimately slowing efforts to develop new midstream infrastructure. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll review Mexico’s refined product demand, production and imports from the U.S. — and discuss what likely lies ahead.

Mexico is obviously a key trading partner in general, and has been the #1 source of total U.S. imports since 2023 (when it overtook China for that top spot) and in 2025 it also became the #1 recipient of total U.S. exports, ending (at least for now) Canada’s third-of-a-century run at the top of that heap. It will come as no surprise to our readers that energy — or more specifically, crude oil, natural gas, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — is a major factor in all that U.S.-Mexico trade. Mexico still is shipping significant volumes of heavy crude to Gulf Coast refineries and the U.S. every day is moving billions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of thousands of barrels of refined products south of the border — Mexico is by far the #1 destination for those products.

We recently examined U.S.-to-Mexico natural gas exports (and the role of non-state pipeline companies) in our three-part blog series, Private Dancers. Today, we shift our attention to refined products. We’ll begin with a big-picture look at Mexico’s demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel; the highly variable output of Pemex’s refineries over the years; and the pace of Mexico’s refined product imports from the U.S. After that, we’ll discuss how gasoline, diesel and jet fuel make their way from Gulf Coast refineries to the Mexican market.

Combined demand for gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel in Mexico rose by almost half in the first decade of the 21st century — from about 900 Mb/d in 2000 to 1.3 MMb/d in 2010 — due to a combination of population and economic gains. Demand growth has moderated since then, averaging 1.3 MMb/d in 2015 and just under 1.4 MMb/d in 2024 and 2025. (There was a sizable dip in 2020 — to just 1.1 MMb/d — due to Covid.) Over the same 2015-25 period, Mexican demand for gasoline (blue layer in Figure 1 below) increased from 807 Mb/d to 835 Mb/d, while diesel demand (green layer) grew from 421 Mb/d to 427 Mb/d and jet fuel demand (yellow layer) rose by one-third, from 74 Mb/d to 101 Mb/d.