Mexico Ends Oil and Gas Monopoly
The senate in Mexico has taken a historic step by approving the government’s energy reform. The decision was made possible with the support not only from the current ruling party, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) but also the more conservative National Action Party commonly known as the PAN and will and foreign investment into a 76-year-old state monopoly.
The step marks the conclusion of a raft of structural reforms undertaken by President Enrique Pena Nieto to modernize the country. Besides hydrocarbons which are considered Mexico’s national treasure, the overhaul has changed the rules of the game for telecommunications, education, taxes, finance and the voting system.
World attention has been focused on this whirlwind of reforms that resulted from the Pact for Mexico, a cross party agreement between the PRI, the PAN and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, the PRD The PRD however was very upset over the breaking of the oil monopoly.
“With time, when these reforms reach full maturity,their benefits will be felt”, said the president on Monday, July 21 “We have pushed though an agenda of very important change at the institutional and legislative levels with participation from all political forces and with a desire to seek the broadest consensus and majority support.”
The PRD has threatened to organize protests and use all legal resources to cancel the bill.This party has been a vocal opponent of energy reform, claiming that the president is selling the country out to foreign interests.
By opening up to private investment, Mexico undoes the historic decision announced on March 18, 1938 by then-president Lazaro Cardenas to expropriate the country’s oil companies which up until then had been in the hands of British and US multinationals.
This charismatic revolutionary general took the step after the corporations refused to improve the terrible working conditions of Mexico’s oil workers. His decision brought Mexican society together ike nothing else before, and triggered a wave of patriotic sentiment that resurfaces every time there is talk about hydrocarbons.
The PRD clams that by turniing oil and eectricityover to private hands, the nation will lose income to cover its needs in education, health, security and, employment and economic growth.
(to be continued.)
