The Mexico city government will hold a referendum on plans for the state oil company, PEMEX, to partner with foreign oil companies. Likely to fail due to organization by the PRD, this might make passage of the reform bill by the national Congress harder:
The July 27 referendum isn’t endorsed by the federal government, and won’t have any direct impact on the bill being debated in the Senate. Still, a lopsided vote against loosening restrictions on state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos may fuel more protests by opponents of the bill, said Jose Antonio Crespo, an analyst at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City.
I have not seen much in the news about progress on this front. Still, it appears there are some that think the reforms will pass. The two month period of debate that was announced in response to the sit-in that shut down Congress in April is due to end very soon. Not sure how quickly action on the pending bill will proceed thereafter.
Production of crude in Mexico dropped 5.3% from 2006 to 2007. Net exports dropped a whopping 14.9%, and the amount exported to the US fell 10.1%. Link. This is not good news in the US about a country that ranked second on our imports list. Apparently this trend will continue for some time:
29-04-08 Mexico will reduce its crude oil exports to the US by an average of 184,000 bpd throughout 2008, a situation that could continue for 2 years longer. According to PMI Comercio Internacional, the Petroleos Mexicanos affiliate in charge of marketing, a reduction in US-bound exports for 2008 — and possibly until 2010 — was due to Mexico’s reduced oil output.
That would be a 12% drop from 2007 to 2008. Sadly it looks like the total year numbers might be lower than that, as May export numbers dropped about 10% over April. I am not sure of what special events might have contributed to this, perhaps tropical storm Arthur had an impact. I need to try and find data broken out by field, to see if Cantarell’s decline can be isolated.
In a related note, apparently gas shipments to areas near the US border are being reduced to try and combat US drivers crossing the border to fill up on cheaper Mexican gas and diesel.
However, it appears that US consumption has been drastically reduced throughout this year, so the reduction in imports might be outweighed by reduced demand.
