Mexico’s Lower House Passes Nationalist Electricity Bill

02/24/2021

Source: Bloomberg

Mexico’s lower house of congress approved a controversial electricity bill that prioritizes the state utility above private renewable companies in the latest nationalist move for the country’s energy market.

The bill, proposed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was approved without any changes in the early morning on Wednesday, with 289 votes in favor, 152 opposed and one abstention. It will now be taken up by the senate, where the ruling Morena party and its allies have a majority.

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Opinion: AMLO’s Plan to Drop Texas Gas

02/21/2021

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision last week to ban natural-gas exports to Mexico temporarily was shortsighted and counterproductive for his state.

This isn’t to dismiss the suffering in Texas. But Northern Mexico, which was also in the deep freeze, is the Lone Star State’s largest trading partner and its biggest market for natural-gas exports. Trying to use a state edict to cut off Mexican power generators in a crisis was a public admission that in Texas’s eyes, customers south of the border don’t rate.

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Volkswagen and Audi to resume production in Mexico after gas shortages

02/21/2021

Source: Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The Mexican unit of Volkswagen AG will resume production of its Tiguan sports utility vehicle on Monday evening, the company said in a statement on Sunday, following gas shortages that hit swathes of Mexico last week.

Meanwhile, Audi will resume normal production levels at its plant in Puebla on Monday, after “the supply of hydrocarbons to the industrial sector was guaranteed,” the company said on Sunday.

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Mexico Cries Foul at Natural Gas Cutoff Ordered by Texas Governor

02/18/2021

Source: The New York Times

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government said on Thursday that it was working to reverse an order from Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to restrict natural gas exports, part of that state’s effort to resolve widespread power outages that have left millions of Texans without electricity in the middle of a deadly winter storm.

Mr. Abbott’s order has heightened tensions between the two countries, with top Mexican officials protesting the governor’s decision to cut off gas supplies just as Mexico works to resolve its own mass power outages as a result of the frigid weather.

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Blackout Politics: AMLO’s Energy Plan Will Backfire

02/17/2021

Source: Americas Quarterly

On Feb. 16, a day after a winter storm-related energy crisis left more than 4 million Mexicans without electricity, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tried to seize the moment. “What is the lesson in all of this? We must produce,” the president said in one of his daily press briefings.

The president, popularly known as AMLO, went on to blame the country’s dependence on natural gas imports from the U.S. The blackout, he said, was further proof of a need for Mexican energy self-sufficiency.

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Mexico Blames U.S. as Energy Crisis Spills Across the Border

02/16/2021

Source: Yahoo! News

(Bloomberg) — If President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was looking for ammunition in his quest to cut Mexico’s reliance on foreign energy, it would be hard to top the electricity blackouts affecting the north of the country.

Mexico reported 4.77 million homes and businesses losing power Monday after imports of natural gas from the U.S. were curbed, knocking power stations offline.

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Texas freeze leaves millions in northern Mexico without power

02/16/2021

Source: Aljazeera

Freezing weather in the US state of Texas left almost five million people in northern Mexico without power early on Monday, as a shortage of natural gas disrupted electricity production.

Mexico’s government-owned utility, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), said on Monday its operations were interrupted as the winter storm in Texas froze natural gas pipelines.

Mexico uses gas to generate about 60 percent of its power, compared with about 40 percent in the United States, and the country built pipelines to take advantage of cheap natural gas from its northern neighbour.

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Mexico was once a climate leader – now it’s betting big on coal

02/15/2021

Source: The Guardian

The men on the midnight shift smoked cigarettes and cracked jokes in the glow of their helmet lights as they prepared to go underground. They were loading safety equipment and coils of pipe onto wheelbarrows, in readiness for a second shift due to start working later that week.

“We’re reactivating the industry,” said Arturo Rivera Wong, who had just taken on 40 more workers at the mine he owns in the scrublands of the border state of Coahuila.

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Analysis: Mexican power bill seeks legal compromise for bruised investors

02/09/2021

Source: Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is gambling he can use a contentious new bill to cement public sector control of the electricity sector without inundating his government with more lawsuits from investors already smarting from his policies.

Corporate lobbies have objected to the bill, which will give priority in electricity dispatch to national power utility the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), and eliminate Mexico’s obligation to buy power through auctions.

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Mexico’s Top Court Sets Back President’s Plans for State Power Company

02/03/2021

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that changes in regulations for the country’s electricity market giving priority to the state-owned utility over private power generators is unconstitutional.

The ruling is a setback for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s plans to restore the dominance of state-owned energy companies, and bodes badly for a bill he sent to congress this week that would give the state-owned utility CFE a commanding position in the power market.

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