Pemex this week unveiled several measures aimed at strengthening the Mexican state-led company.

They include a reworked $8 billion loan with JP Morgan, HSBC and Mizuho Securities and others, as well as fiscal regime adjustments designed to lighten the company’s historically heavy tax burden.

However, observers were not optimistic about the effects of these measures especially after president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Pemex would build a proposed refinery on its own and throw out bids from private sector companies for the project after they came in above the company’s $8 billion budget.