U.S.-Mexican energy trade a bright spot

Feb. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. crude oil exported to Mexico is one of the more lucrative commodities for North American energy trade, the U.S. Energy Department reported.

A daily briefing from the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reported that total energy exports to Mexico last year was one of the more valued exports in North America.

While the situation could change in the future because of amendments to rules governing U.S. crude oil exports, the EIA said Mexico is currently second only to Canada when it comes to total trade in energy products.

"For 2016, the value of U.S. energy exports to Mexico was $20.2 billion, while the value of U.S. energy imports from that country was $8.7 billion," the government brief read.

Last year, energy products represented around 9 percent of all U.S. exports to Mexico and 3 percent of all U.S. imports from Mexico. The United States last year sent on average a half million barrels of crude oil per day to Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexico is the fourth-largest exporter or crude oil to the United States, behind Venezuela.

Total Mexican crude oil production has been on the decline, however, and the country has started shipping more of its oil to the European and Asian economies. U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to make his country energy independent while at the same time reconfiguring regional trade deals and promoting tighter border restrictions.

Before Trump's inauguration, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Mexico's economy was already facing headwinds because of a "highly complicated global backdrop." Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto faced pressure at home, meanwhile, when retail gasoline prices spiked up to 20 percent after the government left the sector open to market dynamics to start 2017.

U.S. gasoline exports accounted for nearly half of the Mexico's gasoline consumption for the first 10 months of last year. The EIA said that the value of petroleum products exported to Mexico in 2015, the last full year for which data are available, was more than $16 billion.