Mexico's Natural Gas Imports Hit Record 6.6 Bcf/d as Pemex Output Keeps Sliding

Mexico bought more American natural gas in 2025 than in any year on record, and the reason is simple: it had no other choice. Pipeline imports from the United States averaged about 6.638 Bcf/d over the year, up 3.4% from 2024 and the highest since the country began tracking the figure in 1973. That volume now covers roughly 77% of Mexican demand. President Claudia Sheinbaum has put the number even more bluntly, saying Mexico depends on the United States for about 75% of its gas.

It was the third straight year of record imports. And it landed in the same twelve months that Sheinbaum's government made energy sovereignty a headline priority, ordering Pemex to lift domestic production and cut the country's reliance on gas flowing south across the Texas border. The gap between the goal and the meter reading has rarely been wider.

Pemex production is going the wrong way

The problem starts at the wellhead. Pemex's natural gas output fell 7.7% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, dropping from about 4.7 Bcf/d to 4.4 Bcf/d. By the third quarter the company reported gas production of roughly 3.73 Bcf/d, down again from the year before. These are not one-off dips. They track aging fields, years of underinvestment in exploration, and reserves that have been drawn down faster than they have been replaced.

Meanwhile demand keeps climbing. Mexican gas consumption rose from about 7.7 Bcf/d to 8.6 Bcf/d over the period the U.S. Energy Information Administration tracked, and most of that growth came from the electric power sector. Gas-fired plants are being built and run harder, and nearshoring has pulled new factories onto the grid. When domestic supply shrinks and demand grows, the balance has to come from somewhere. It comes from Texas.

The pipelines that made it possible

The record wasn't only about need. It was also about steel in the ground. U.S. pipeline exports to Mexico averaged 6.4 Bcf/d in 2024, a 25% jump from 2019 and the strongest since 1975, and then spiked to about 7.5 Bcf/d in May 2025, the highest single month ever recorded. Exports out of West Texas alone tripled from 0.6 Bcf/d in 2019 to 1.8 Bcf/d by 2024 as new connecting lines opened in central and southwestern Mexico.

The Sur de Texas-Tuxpan line carries volumes up from the South Texas corridor to power plants and LNG terminals. It now ties into the Southeast Gateway pipeline, an offshore system completed in 2025 that feeds new generation on the Yucatan Peninsula. Each new link makes it easier and cheaper to move American gas deeper into Mexico, which is good for reliability and bad for any argument about independence. The infrastructure is built to import.

Where the vulnerability really bites

Heavy import reliance would be less alarming if Mexico had a cushion. It doesn't. The country has almost no domestic gas storage, so it runs close to hand-to-mouth on daily deliveries from a single supplier. A cold snap in Texas, a pipeline outage, or a policy fight in Washington translates almost immediately into risk on the Mexican grid. The February 2021 Texas freeze, which cut flows south and triggered blackouts in northern Mexico, is still the reference point everyone uses.

That exposure is why the numbers matter beyond bookkeeping. The 2026 review of the USMCA trade pact hangs over the relationship, and gas is one of the most concentrated dependencies Mexico carries into it. When three-quarters of a country's gas rides on pipelines from one neighbor and there's no storage to ride out a disruption, the leverage sits on the other side of the border.

Sheinbaum's answer: bring in the private sector

The government knows the math. In a real shift from the resource-nationalist posture of recent years, Pemex is now courting private capital to develop the unconventional gas it cannot fund alone. The company's 2025-2035 strategic plan calls for reactivating complex plays through contractual schemes that let outside investors in, a plain admission that the state firm can't carry the capital load by itself.

The prize is the Burgos Basin, which sits just below the Texas line and shares geology with the prolific Eagle Ford Shale on the American side. Pemex has also flagged the Tampico-Misantla and Sabinas-Burro-Picachos basins. Lewis Energy has already picked up an oilfield-services contract tied to Burgos unconventional work, an early sign the outreach is producing deals rather than press releases. Broader progress is slower: of 21 mixed-investment contracts identified for underdeveloped fields, only about five had been awarded by early 2026.

What to watch next

Turning shale ambition into molecules takes years, and Mexico has tried and stalled on the Burgos shale before. Fracking incentives and private contracts can change the trajectory, but not the 2026 balance sheet. For now, every new gas-fired megawatt and every nearshoring plant deepens the reliance the sovereignty policy was meant to reverse.

The realistic read is that U.S. exports to Mexico keep setting records through 2026 even as Pemex chases private partners for the long game. Sheinbaum can push production targets and cut ribbons on shale contracts, but until domestic output stops falling and someone builds storage, the honest description of Mexican energy policy is managed dependence. The 6.6 Bcf/d figure isn't a peak the country is trying to defend. It's a floor it can't yet get below.