MEXICO CITY
Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto speaks during the promulgation of the electoral political reform in Mexico City, January 31, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Edgard Garrido
Passed in December, the energy overhaul ends the state's 75-year-old oil and gas monopoly and aims to generate billions of dollars worth of private investment in Mexico, the world's 10th biggest producer of crude oil.
The so-called secondary laws are needed to set regulations and other rules for the implementation of the reform, and the government had hoped to present them weeks ago. However, disputes with an increasingly divided opposition delayed the process.
The government is keen to present the laws before the current session of Congress ends on Wednesday and lawmakers in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had said they would be presented late on Tuesday or on Wednesday.
The finance and energy ministries have called a joint news conference for 10 a.m. local time (11. a.m. EDT) on Wednesday, which senior officials in the PRI said would be when they are presented.
If the energy laws are presented on Wednesday, lawmakers say they are unlikely to be approved before the second half of June, when special sessions of Congress are expected to be held.
The PRI, which created state oil giant Pemex in 1938, wants to secure broad backing for the energy laws and is counting on support from the opposition center-right National Action Party (PAN).
Still, the PAN has made the passing of an electoral reform a condition for its support on energy. Those negotiations have proceeded slower than the PRI had hoped in the Senate and could still affect the fate of the energy legislation.
(Reporting by Dave Graham and David Alire Garcia; Editing by Joseph Radford)
No comments:
Post a Comment