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PRI snubs Mexico energy shake-up



By Upstream staff 

Photo by Gustavo Benitez (Presidencia de la Republica).


Mexico's key opposition party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is unlikely to back any oil sector reform proposal that would let private companies form profit-sharing alliances with the state-run Pemex, PRI powerbroker Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones Rivera said today.

"For us, risk contracts are unacceptable for now," Beltrones told the Mexican daily Reforma.

"Personally, I don't think there's the desired level of consensus," said Beltrones, who is the party's president in the Senate.

Beltrones, one of the PRI's strongest voices on energy policy, said partnerships with other state-run oil players would be more acceptable than private sector joint ventures, which opponents say could breach a constitutional ban on companies other than Pemex drilling for Mexican oil.

Lawmakers from the three main political parties are trying to draw up an energy bill to give Pemex more autonomy and flexibility, and conservative President Felipe Calderon would also like it to permit private partnerships in specific areas like deep-water oilfields on the US maritime border.

Calderon needs the full backing of the PRI as his party lacks a majority in Congress. Some PRI lawmakers have said they are open to listening to the ruling party's ideas.

The left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, however, strongly opposes private investment in the oil sector.

Many oil analysts believe strategic joint ventures with experienced foreign players could speed up Mexico's entry into the crucial but technically challenging deep-water sector.


Thursday, 28 February, 2008, 16:55 GMT  | last updated: Thursday, 28 February, 2008, 18:01 GMT

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