Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Gets the Blame

[Julio Huato <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie posted:

> <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/worldbusiness/09pemex.html>
> March 9, 2007
> Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Gets the Blame
> By ELISABETH MALKIN
>
> MEXICO CITY, March 8 — The KU-S oil production platform off the coast
> of Ciudad del Carmen, with its 10,000-ton tangle of yellow and red
> tanks and pipes, would seem the natural product of three years of
> soaring energy prices. The newly installed platform certainly is the
> face that Mexico's state oil monopoly, Pemex, would like to show off.
>
> But Pemex is in trouble. Its production and proven reserves are
> falling, and it has no money to reverse the slide. Mexico is the
> second-largest supplier of imported oil to the United States, after
> Canada, but its total exports are slipping. If the company continues
> on its current course, Mexico may one day have trouble just keeping up
> with rising demand at home.

Then Yoshie comments:

> What looks like the problem of "peak oil" to some is in reality the
> political problem of mismatch between who has oil and who has
> investment capital and advanced technology, in the context of rising
> domestic oil consumption on the part of oil producers, NOT a
> geological problem of running out of recoverable oil (which we WON'T
> any time soon).  This is actually a very politically interesting and
> important problem, at the heart of imperialist thought today, but
> "peak oil" theory confuses everything and turns attention of leftists
> away from the real problem.

I agree it's a political problem.  But I'd frame it differently.

PEMEX's problem is basically the same as FEMA's in the U.S.  In
Mexico, you have a group of corrupt, incompetent prevaricators running
the government (and government-controlled companies) who -- by their
very nature of corrupt and incompetent prevaricators -- have it easy
to show that the government is a bad manager.

So, all this press on PEMEX and peak oil is to prepare conditions for
-- indeed -- the privatization of PEMEX.  Since PEMEX provides a large
chunk of the funds for social spending (education, health care,
infrastructure, etc.), then this is their strategy to "starve the
beast."  They want PEMEX for obvious reasons and also because that
would tie the hands of a potential left-wing government in the future.
It's a class struggle.