BY ADRIANA GÓMEZ LICÓN
AND KATHERINE CORCORAN
The Associated Press
thenews.com.mx
MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Congress voted Thursday to open the country’s moribund state-run oil industry to foreign and domestic investors, casting aside nationalist opposition to approve the most dramatic energy reform in seven decades.
The 353-134 vote will allow the government to give private companies contracts and licenses to explore and drill for oil and gas, deals now prohibited under Mexico’s constitution.
The final step, approval by 17 of Mexico’s 31 states, is widely seen as assured.
Opponents say they fear that multinationals, especially from the U.S., will once again regain the sort of domination they had over Mexico’s oil before 1938. Mexico remains one of the top five crude exporters to the U.S., shipping more than 1 million barrels a day.
Most oil analysts had a positive view of the bill hashed out by President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the conservative National Action Party (PAN).
“The opening of Mexico’s markets to put it bluntly, we believe is very good for the people of Mexico and the people everywhere in the world that uses energy,” William Colton, Exxon Mobil’s vice president of corporate strategic planning, said in a webcast before the vote Thursday.
Supporters say a better energy sector could add at least a full percentage point to Mexico’s annual growth rate, which was scaled back dramatically this year from a projected 3.5 percent to 1.3 percent. Backers also say it will be a boon to all three countries, the U.S., Canada and Mexico, in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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