Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.
07/13/2021
Source: Reuters
July 13 (Reuters) – Mexico’s peso lost 1% on Tuesday on concerns over more government interference in the energy sector, while most other Latin American currencies fell as rising U.S. inflation raised fears of monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he plans to send a constitutional reform to Congress, widely opposed by independent power firms and investors on grounds that it would hurt competition.
07/07/2021
Source: Upstream
Russian oil producer Lukoil has agreed to pay $435 million and additional unspecified incurred development costs to acquire a 50% operating stake in two Mexican shallow-water blocks from US independent Fieldwood Energy.
The blocks are part of the Area 4 project in the Gulf of Mexico and host the Ichalkil and Pokoch fields.
07/07/2021
Source: El País
It was a perfect opportunity. When Mexico opened its market to allow private companies to produce and sell energy for the first time in decades, two US executives suddenly found themselves in a privileged position. Mexico would be buying significant amounts of natural gas from its northern neighbor and the person in charge of negotiating the contracts was someone they knew well: an ex-colleague from more than 15 years earlier, with whom they’d worked with in another recently liberalized market.
The contracts were awarded under Guillermo Turrent, ex director of CFEI, who had worked with a high-ranking executive and the founder of Whitewater at Royal Dutch Shell in San Diego, California during 2000 and 2001. Details of their employment and behavior while at Shell is documented by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), where a case remains open that examines the company’s purported overcharging of the state of California for electricity in the negotiation of a long-term contract. During that time, just a year after opening its market to private competition, California suffered an electricity crisis that included widespread blackouts that affected millions of residents and caused record price increases for power that almost bankrupted the state government.
07/07/2021
Source: Reuters
MEXICO CITY/WASHINGTON, July 7 (Reuters) – Trade ministers from the United States and Canada expressed concern on Wednesday about Mexico’s energy policies, as they met with their Mexican counterpart to mark the one-year anniversary of a regional trade pact.
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai told reporters during a joint news conference that the United States is closely following Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s approach to the oil and power sectors, and seemed to suggest underlying differences.
07/06/2021
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Mexico’s government designated state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos as the operator of a large offshore oil reservoir it shares with a consortium led by Houston-based Talos Energy Inc., which has already invested heavily in the reservoir.
The designation gives Pemex management control of the joint development and comes as nationalist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador steps up efforts to revert key parts of an overhaul in 2014 that opened oil exploration and production to foreign investment.
07/06/2021
Source: CNN
A blaze on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico resembling a large “eye of fire” has been brought under control, according to Mexico’s state-run oil company Pemex.
Orange flames resembling molten lava appeared to erupt from below the surface in videos that went viral on social media, which dubbed it an “eye of fire.” The fire broke out a short distance from a Pemex oil platform.
06/02/2021
Source: Reuters
Mexico’s leftist ruling party has dropped plans to nationalize lithium production and is now pushing to welcome private investors to help develop the country’s potential in the metal used to make batteries, the senior lawmaker behind the proposal told Reuters.
Mexico, a major copper and silver producer, is home to large potential reserves of lithium, used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Most of it is in hard-to-tap clay deposits that are costly and technically difficult to mine.
05/26/2021
Source: Reuters
Mexico should recover its investment to buy the controlling stake of the Deer Park refinery in Texas during the next two to three years, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday.
Mexican state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMX.UL) this week announced the purchase of a 50.1%-stake in the 340,000-barrel-per-day refinery from its partner Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) for some $596 million.
05/25/2021
Source: AP
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico said Monday it will buy Shell’s 50% share in the jointly owned Deer Park refinery near Houston for about $600 million.
The move comes as part of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s central policy to build, acquire or renovate oil refineries, in an era when most countries are trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
“We are going to stop buying fuel abroad … we will become self sufficient by 2023,” said López Obrador, who is spending about $9 billion to build a similar-size new refinery in his home state of Tabasco.
05/15/2021
Source: Yahoo! News
(Bloomberg) — Fuel that is so dirty that the global shipping industry banned its use last year is being burned at the highest level in three years in Mexican power plants.
With the global shipping industry shunning sulfurous fuel oil to curb emissions, storage tanks in Mexico are overflowing with the stuff, a byproduct of its attempt to produce more gasoline domestically. The solution Mexico has chosen is to push more of it into electricity generation, replacing cleaner-burning natural gas. Consumption of the dirty fuel jumped by almost 50% in the past year to more than a 100,000 barrels a day in March, according to government data.
