Houston Chronicle by Emily Pickrell Oct. 11, 2019
Mexico still celebrates a federal holiday dedicated to the 1938 nationalization of the oil industry that seized reserves and facilities from international energy companies. To this day, Mexico’s presidents unfailingly attend celebrations commemorating the event that returned oil resources to the Mexican people and ended decades of exploitation with few public benefits.
The place that the holiday, known as Oil Expropriation Day, holds in the national consciousness indicates how steep a cultural climb it was in 2014 for the administration of former president Enrique Pena Nieto to end the 75-year monopoly of the state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, and reopen Mexico’s energy resources to private investment. It’s also key in explaining why the country under populist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is moving once again to freeze out foreign oil and gas companies and consolidate the power and influence of Pemex.
“The current administration believes that a bigger Pemex is a more profitable Pemex,†said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center for Public Policy in Washington. “This government wants to ensure that Pemex is the dominant actor at every level of the value chain in oil.â€
The effort to restore Pemex as the dominant player in the Mexican industry comes less than five years after landmark legislation changed the Mexican constitution to allow international companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil to invest and partner with Pemex. The new laws by design diminished the role of Pemex, hoping to attract much needed foreign investment and know-how to reverse Mexico’s rapidly falling oil production rates and end chronic fuel shortages.
But since Lopez Obrador took office in late 2018, his administration has indefinitely suspended planned auctions to lease both deepwater and onshore fields to international companies. Instead, Pemex is developing the prospects and is even building a new, multibillion-dollar refinery to reduce fuel imports.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Despite-energy-market-reforms-AMLO-seeks-to-14510094.php