Pemex Governance: $150M Unaccounted
An internal-control complaint around the Campo Nejo project raises fresh questions about PMI's management architecture.
A new complaint at the Pemex Internal Control Body alleges that roughly $150 million of the Campo Nejo development budget is unaccounted for, and places the company's most opaque subsidiary under a narrower governance spotlight.
Source and Scope
This note is analytical commentary on reporting by columnist Mario Maldonado, published in El Universal on June 21, 2023. The original column is available through eluniversal.com.mx. Where possible, we have cross-checked names and positions against public Pemex disclosures.
The Complaint
In March 2022, Pemex and the National Hydrocarbons Commission modified the development plan for Campo Nejo, a gas and oil field in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, with an allocated budget in excess of $1.2 billion to be spent through 2035. Complaints filed with the company's Internal Control Body now allege that approximately ten percent of the amount — $150 million — is unaccounted for.
Investigations identified in the reporting center on Ulises Hernández Romano, who has served since October 2019 as director of PMI, the Pemex subsidiary responsible for crude marketing, export, and import activity. PMI is widely regarded as one of the most opaque entities within the broader Pemex group, and for that reason one of the most coveted internal appointments.
The Governance Architecture
Before PMI, Hernández Romano held senior technical and commercial positions within Pemex Exploration and Production, including roles connected to reserves, partnerships, and portfolio administration. He held some of those roles in Tabasco, home state of current Pemex CEO Octavio Romero. The reporting indicates Romero has asked for a deeper review of the $150 million case.
A parallel concern in the complaints is administrative rather than operational: the allegation that Pemex's Corporate Administration Directorate continues to report income into Hernández Romano's envelope despite his formal position at PMI — a salary-and-benefits arrangement that, if confirmed, bypasses the chain-of-command discipline that a state productive company is expected to maintain.
The Regulatory Interface
The reporting also notes a relationship between Hernández Romano and Armando Mejía at the National Hydrocarbons Commission. Mejía retired from Pemex in August 2022 and was appointed director of Measurement and Marketing of Production at the regulator. He had previously served Pemex as commercial director of crude oil and head of the Operations Directorate. The same individual thus sits on both sides of the regulator-operator interface in close succession — a structural concern for anyone evaluating the integrity of production measurement and marketing disclosures.
The column further links Hernández Romano to the extension of Baker Hughes contracts under the current administration — the same contracting line connected in earlier reporting to the La Casa Gris case in Houston. Whether that link is operational or coincidental is not yet established in open sources.
Why It Matters
Pemex has long been a durable symbol of Mexican corruption, across administrations. What is worth tracking here is not the allegation itself — the Internal Control Body will move, or it will not — but the governance architecture that the complaint exposes: concentration of authority at PMI, personnel rotation between Pemex and its regulator, and continuing administrative arrangements that sit outside the formal organizational chart.
For a private-office client with exposure to Pemex counterparties, that architecture is the material fact. It narrows the operational room for independent verification and raises the evidentiary bar for any counterparty disclosure that contradicts the public record.
The Takeaways
The $150 million complaint itself will take time to resolve; the governance architecture around PMI is already visible and already material.
Rotation of senior personnel between Pemex and the National Hydrocarbons Commission is a structural feature, not an anomaly, and should be priced into any due-diligence posture.
The Baker Hughes linkage — on its own, not decisive — is a thread that crosses two earlier cases; careful contract-history review remains the right private-office discipline for any Pemex exposure.
Counterparty disclosures from Pemex and its subsidiaries should be treated as starting points, not end states, for verification.
The Intelligence Research Desk at GO PRIVATELY LLC
All information sourced from publicly available intelligence. Conditions evolve; verify current status before operational decisions.
