This article elaborate on the issue of the ability of the Mexican national oil company - Pemex - undergoing a crisis to continue competing in the rapidly changing global hydrocarbons market. To do that, the article describes three spheres of significant changes: pricing, development and introduction of new technologies and change of location of the main sales markets, as well as peculiarities of national oil companies hindering their adaptation to new external conditions. After that, the authors analyzed parameters of Pemex as related to these peculiarities. In some cases, parameters of Pemex are compared to ExxonMobil and PetroBras for better understanding. The study demonstrated that Pemex does not have competitive advantages in any of the aforementioned spheres. The identified facts allowed concluding that Pemex is not capable of continuing to effectively compete.