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 Editorials | Issues | May 2008 
Leftists Slow Mexico Energy Reform Plan
 Jason Lange - Reuters
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Mexico City - A heated debate over the future of Mexico's oil industry will drag on for months, delaying President Felipe Calderon's plans to give foreign companies a bigger say in the country's sagging energy sector.
Calderon aims to patch up faltering output in the world's No. 6 oil exporter by allowing more private participation in the cherished oil sector, nationalized 70 years ago.
It is the biggest and riskiest reform attempt of Calderon's 18-month-old presidency and he had hoped to have it approved in in April.
Instead, leftists have forced him into holding a long "national debate" in the Senate until at least late July, featuring not only politicians but also academics, industry experts and other public figures.
Energy Minister Georgina Kessel kicks off the debate on Thursday, presenting the government's case that Mexico needs to allow private firms to join with state oil monopoly Pemex to seek oil in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The leftist opposition fears that Calderon's plan will mean a creeping privatization of Pemex and admits that its strategy is to drag out the debate as long as possible. A vote might not happen until August or later.
"(We are) slowing things down," said Sen. Pablo Gomez of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.
Mexico is a top supplier of crude to the United States but output has fallen in recent years as its offshore Cantarell field declines.
Calderon's plan would let Pemex use performance-based contracts to pay companies to go after potentially large oil deposits lying under the deep waters of the Gulf and to develop onshore fields where tricky rock formations make pumping oil out more difficult.
LEFTIST COMEBACK
Failure to win a meaningful energy reform would be a victory for Calderon's leftist nemesis, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who accuses him of stealing the 2006 presidential election and is trying to mount a political comeback.
Leftist lawmakers staged sit-ins in the main halls of for two weeks last month until Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, agreed to the national energy debate.
"Lopez Obrador definitely won the preliminary round. He set the agenda," said Federico Estevez, a political scientist at ITAM university.
The left, like Calderon, lacks a majority in , and is trying to chisel away at an energy reform alliance the president is trying to build with the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
"The goal is to stop the reform from getting approved, so one thing that would help ... would be for the PRI to back out," Gomez said.
The PRI backed Calderon last year on a major tax reform and its leaders in say they like the general look of his energy plan, but some members have criticized parts that would allow private companies to own refineries.
Lawmakers from Calderon's party suspect the debate could become a long talking shop that will turn voters off.
"After three or four weeks people are going to get bored and lose interest," said Sen. Gustavo Madero, a member of the PAN who sits on the Senate energy committee.
(Editing by Alan Elsner) |
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