Fight Begins Over Privatizing Mexico's Oil Monopoly Associated Press
go to original November 18, 2013

Police try to control a small crowd during a march protesting what they claim is an alleged government plan to privatize PEMEX, Mexico's state-owned oil company. (Ivan Pierre Aguirre/AP)

MEXICO CITY — The fight to revamp Mexico's moribund, state-run oil industry could start as early as this week with a Senate proposal to allow private access to the country's oil, a nationalist symbol that for decades has been fiercely protected by the constitution from possible profiteering by foreign companies.

Legislators from the two parties supporting an oil overhaul say they support constitutional changes to allow the government to grant licenses and share oil and profits with multinational giants such as Exxon or Chevron. The anticipated proposal would go much further than the plan introduced by President Enrique Pena Nieto in August, which would have allowed the sharing of profits but not of oil.

Javier Trevino, a legislator from Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, said his party has struck an agreement after several weeks of talks with the opposition National Action Party, which has favored stronger private investment from the start. He said the bill emerging from the Senate is expected to offer a wider range of options for companies interested in investing in deep-water drilling, including licenses for the right to extract and commercialize oil. It would allow an oil company to "book" or list reserves as assets, something Mexico has forbidden in its mission to keep its oil in the hands of Mexicans.

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