Mexico is producing more gas than in a decade — and depends on Texas more than ever

The number and its denominator

The U.S. Energy Information Administration closed its 2025 series with 2,422,839 MMcf of pipeline gas exported to Mexico — 6.638 Bcf/d, up 3.4% on 2024 and the highest annual figure ever recorded FACT. It was not a ceiling. In June 2026 the same series logged 7.62 Bcf/d, the strongest month on record, and flow data for August point to roughly 7.9 Bcf/d, pending the official release on September 30 ESTIMATE.

What that volume means depends on the denominator, and the industry has been careless with it. The "77%" figure that has circulated on social media and in some press notes — including our own threads in July — does not appear in any official source. Mexico's Energy Sector Program 2025-2030 puts 2024 consumption at 8,845 MMcf/d and imports at 6,424 MMcf/d (72.6%); Pemex's Strategic Plan cites 6,666 MMcf/d imported, "74% of national supply"; SENER's statistical handbook shows 75.9% for September 2025; and the Energy Secretary herself cited "75%" in April 2026. Roughly three of every four cubic feet Mexico consumes arrive from Texas FACT. The number is serious enough without inflating it.

Producing more is not supplying more

The paradox of 2026 is that Pemex is producing more gas than at any point since 2023 and dependence has not moved. In the second quarter, gross hydrocarbon gas output reached 4,006 MMcf/d, 11.5% higher year on year, with non-associated gas now 59% of the total FACT. The Strategic Plan and PROSENER speak of reaching 5,000 MMcf/d by 2030 and "reducing external dependence by 20%".

The trouble is that the figure that matters for the balance is not gross production but net supply: dry gas leaving processing plants plus direct field extraction, net of own use, reinjection, nitrogen and flaring. That number has hovered around 2,200–2,400 MMcf/d for years. Dry gas from plants was 1,704 MMcf/d in 2025 and 1,834 MMcf/d in Q2 2026; Pemex vented or flared 446 MMcf/d in 2025, about 7% of what it produced FACT. On that denominator, 11.5% more gross production adds a few hundred MMcf/d of supply against demand that keeps growing with power generation, industry and — since July — LNG exports.

Data point. SENER, April 2026: consumption ~9,000 MMcf/d, production ~2,000, imports ~6,800. Official target: lift production from 2,776 to 5,871 MMcf/d. No Mexican basin has ever doubled its dry-gas contribution in four years.

This is not a judgement on political will. It is infrastructure arithmetic: converting gross production into supply requires cryogenic plants, gathering pipelines, compression and, above all, non-associated gas in fields that have not been developed for it. None of that gets built before 2028 INTERPRETATION.

What changed over the summer of 2026

Three developments qualify the picture, and none of them reduces dependence.

Mexican LNG exists, but it is Texas under another flag. Energía Costa Azul (Sempra, Baja California) shipped its first cargo on July 8; on July 27 damage to refrigerant compressors pushed commercial operation to the fourth quarter FACT. Its feedgas is Permian. The other two projects — Altamira's second phase, with permits denied and its sponsor restructured, and Saguaro Energía, without a final investment decision and under a provisional court suspension — are not on a 2027 horizon. Mexico will be a re-exporter of U.S. gas long before it is a surplus producer.

"Free gas" is over. Through the first half of 2026 the price at Waha, the Permian hub that references much of the gas crossing the border, averaged −$2.38/MMBtu, with 87 negative days ESTIMATE. That was a gift of Texas pipeline congestion, not a structural Mexican advantage. With the Gulf Coast Express expansion and Hugh Brinson entering service in June, Waha returned to positive territory and trades near $2 in September. Henry Hub averaged $3.52 in 2025; the EIA projects $3.44 for 2026 and $3.31 for 2027 FORECAST. Mexico will keep buying gas that is cheap by global standards; it will no longer buy gas that is given away.

The framework stopped being an assumption. On July 1 the United States stated it would not renew the USMCA "in its current form"; the agreement remains in force and enters annual reviews with bilateral negotiations under way FACT. Gas carries no tariff and there is no sign it will. But a 7 Bcf/d flow that depends on a single supplier, four corridors and a treaty under annual review is, by definition, an asset with explicit regulatory risk — and should be modelled as one.

What it means for capital

For anyone with capital committed in Mexico — operators, generators, manufacturers relocating under nearshoring — the reading differs from the sovereignty debate.

First, the pipeline system is the most reliable energy infrastructure in the country: 14.8 Bcf/d of installed capacity across four corridors, 43% utilised in 2024 FACT. Southeast Gateway added 1.3 Bcf/d in May 2025. The constraint is not bringing gas in; it is moving it within Mexico and turning it into deliverable electricity, which is where nearshoring hit its wall.

Second, the price signal has flipped: the Waha–Henry Hub spread that subsidised Mexican industry in 2025 and the first half of 2026 is closing. Supply contracts indexed to Waha in that window are worth less today than they appeared.

Third, the self-sufficiency target is not an investment hypothesis: it is a political objective that current net supply does not support OPINION. The rational strategy for an operator in Mexico is not to bet on dependence falling but to secure access — firm transport capacity, storage, contracts with clear interruption clauses — while the USMCA review defines the framework. In 2026, natural gas is at once the strongest argument for North American integration and the sharpest reminder of its fragility.

That double edge is the board worth reading. The rest of the chain — who generates with that gas, who finances the plants and under what rules — is the subject of the next analyses in this series: the rotation of Spanish capital in Mexican power generation and the real balance of Pemex's mixed contracts.