Author: Staff

The president of Mexico is trying to achieve what others have tried to do and failed. That is, reform the country’s oil industry to allow more foreign investment.Energy reform might not sound like a big deal in this country. But in Mexico, it’s downright revolutionary.Oil money laid the foundation for Mexico’s economic independence. And many Mexicans see the commodity as a national heritage that should be passed on to future generations, and not an asset to be sold-off to foreign companies.Nonetheless, president Enrique Peña Nieto has proposed a constitutional amendment to allow foreign companies more direct investment in the...

Mexico’s ambitious president has unleashed a staggering series of reforms in his first year, tackling education, labor relations, and drug crime. But the trickiest gambit of all may be one that strikes at the heart of the nation’s pride and its economy: the bid to transform Mexico’s energy sector.President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in December, has confronted in oil and natural gas an issue central to Mexico’s sense of sovereignty. The day in 1938 when President Lázaro Cárdenas kicked out the U.S. and British oil companies and nationalized Mexico’s reserves is celebrated each year as a national...

Mexico has one of the world’s most notoriously closed-off oil industries. The Mexican constitution makes it illegal for anyone but the state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to even own a barrel of oil. If you’re a farmer in Mexico and oil is discovered underneath your land, not one drop of the black gold is yours — it belongs to the state, to the people. As a result, Pemex is the only game in town. There are no private companies operating oilfields in Mexico, no risk-based production sharing contracts or joint ventures with any international oil companies. This could not...