Black Gold Next Frontier for Top Billionaires: Corporate Mexico

02/26/15 Bloomberg 

Mexico’s top three billionaires — Carlos Slim, Alberto Bailleres, and German Larrea — dominate the country’s telecommunications, mining and retail industries. Next up on their priority list: oil. Slim, Bailleres and Larrea, Mexico’s three richest men according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, have created branches within their holding companies to compete in the oil and natural gas industries as the country’s government-run energy monopolies end. Bailleres’s Grupo Bal, which oversees mining companies Fresnillo Plc and Industrias Penoles SAB, formed PetroBal to explore for crude in Mexico two weeks ago.

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Mexico to stop shipping ready-to-use fuel to curb thefts

02/17/15 BBC News 

AP

Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex has announced it will stop shipping ready-to-use petrol and diesel through its pipelines, in an effort to curb fuel thefts. Pemex says it will use its pipelines across Mexico only for unfinished fuel. That fuel will go through a last phase of mixing when it reaches the company’s storage plants. More than $1bn (£650,000) worth of fuel was stolen by Mexican gangs in 2014, an increase of 70% over the previous year. In a statement, the company warned consumers not to buy illegal fuel tapped from its pipelines as it was likely to damage car engines.

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Mexico: Latin America’s Renewable Energy Renaissance

2/9/2015 Power Finance & Risk

In contrast to unpredictable renewable energy policies in the U.S. and the European Union, Mexico has emerged as a lightning rod for renewable energy investment. As renewable energy investors assess changing global opportunities, Mexico continues to offer numerous stable investment prospects. Mexico’s investment-grade credit rating provides potential investors one of the few high-grade investment environments in Latin America. Additionally, the sharp reduction in contracted large-scale renewable energy opportunities in the U.S. and Europe has catalyzed recent interest in Mexico.

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Oil Price Plunge to Affect Mexico’s Private Tenders

2/5/2015 Wall Street Journal

The collapse of oil prices means Mexico’s government will likely get less profit than initially expected from private tenders—the first in eight decades—as companies will seek greater returns in exchange for putting their money in the country, said the head of the agency in charge of organizing the bidding.

“In a context of low prices, the government will capture a smaller share of profits…so that the contractor maintains a reasonable profitability,” Juan Carlos Zepeda, the president of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, said in an interview Wednesday.

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Oil-Price Collapse May Aggravate Producing Nations’ Other Problems

1/5/2015 Oil & Gas Journal

The recent global crude-oil price plunge could be aggravating underlying problems in Mexico, Colombia, and other Western Hemisphere producing nations, speakers suggested during a Feb. 4 discussion at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“Mexico is a perfect storm—a serious production decline and a low oil price,” said Duncan Wood, who directs the center’s Mexico Institute. “It instituted modest energy reforms that look more like service agreements than production-sharing contracts. This might explain why only seven [international oil companies] have asked to see data rooms for the 14 offered contracts. There’s a perception the program has failed.”

Continued lower crude prices could force Mexico’s government to make moves so there would be more interest from outside the country, Wood said. “If it does, it could affect social programs and affect the popularity of [President Enrico Pena Nieto’s] government.”

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Watch the video from the event here.

Mexico to Consider Changes to Pemex Regulatory System

2/4/2015 Reuters

Mexico will review methods for addressing fraud and other issues brought to the attention of internal investigators at state oil company Pemex and could make changes to its control process across all government bodies, a government minister said on Wednesday.

The review is in response to a Reuters report that found congressional auditors issued 274 recommendations between 2008 and 2012 for Pemex to take serious action over contract and other irregularities, but the state oil company acted in only three cases.

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OFFSITE EVENT IN HOUSTON, TX! Mexico’s Energy Reform: Opportunities and Challenges for International Engagement in the Gulf of Mexico

WHERE: Houston, Texas, Rice University*

WHEN: Thursday, February 12, 2015, 8:30am-3:00pm

Mexico’s energy reform has set the stage for significant changes in exploration and development activity in Mexican waters, and the opportunities for collaborative engagement with existing offshore players in U.S. waters could define how oil and gas is developed and produced in the Gulf of Mexico for years to come. This daylong conference will focus on the latest developments and emerging opportunities in offshore oil and gas regulation, safety and environmental protection. There will be discussion of the state of reform efforts in Mexico, the potential impact of these reforms on the recently approved transboundary hydrocarbon agreement, the reforms as a catalyst for transboundary cooperation in oil and gas, the prospect of common safety and environmental expectations, and emerging regulatory opportunities.

On Thursday, February 12, 2015, in Houston, Texas, the Mexico Institute is co-sponsoring the conference “Mexico’s Energy Reform: Opportunities and Challenges for International Engagement in the Gulf of Mexico.” The conference is sponsored in conjunction with the Baker Institute Center for Energy Studies and Mexico Center, the American Petroleum Institute, the Center for Offshore Safety, the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law at the University of Houston, and the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

RSVP here.**

*Please note this event is in Houston, Texas at Rice University.

**There is no charge to attend this event. RSVP by Monday, February 9th.