Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto Ready to Break Up the State Oil Monopoly Phillippe Diederich - VOXXI
go to original March 17, 2013

One of the problems facing the breakup of Pemex, Enrique Peña Nieto would need to change the constitution, and in order to do so he will need two thirds vote by congress. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

On March 18th Mexico celebrates the day president Lazaro Cardenas expropriated Mexico’s oil industry. Now, president Enrique Peña Nieto is getting ready to break up the State oil monopoly.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Peña Niet’s political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, (PRI) which controls 241 of 500 seats in the lower house voted during its national assembly to agree to, “end its opposition to constitutional changes that would ease state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos’s grip on the oil industry.”

Breaking up PEMEX and opening refining, exploration and extraction of oil to foreign companies has been one of Peña Nieto’s political pledges. While he never specifically said he wanted to sell oil leases, he has said PEMEX needs to be broken up. For years the oil giant has been mired in bureaucracy and corruption. PEMEX oil production had dropped and there have been a series of accidents at PEMEX facilities due to lack of maintenance and oversight, including the recent explosion at PEMEX headquarters in Mexico City, which killed 34 people.

Read the whole story at VOXXI

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