Mexico Opens Door to Oil Privatization

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/08/07/mexico-opens-door-oil-privatization



"Now we can truly say that our country has been betrayed."

Mexico Opens Door to Oil Privatization
Max Ocean, editorial intern
Thursday, August 07, 2014
Common Dreams

Mexico's Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to an energy reform plan that will open the sector to foreign and private investment by multinational oil companies, marking an end to the 75-year-old monopoly of the state-owned oil company Pemex and the beginning of what many have said will be a new wave of corporate exploitation of the country's natural resources.

Mexico's oil revenue has been declining as the country's output decreased by a million barrels per day over the last decade. The move is an attempt to get the sector moving again by encouraging private investment.

This opening of private investment was only made possible by a constitutional amendment that was signed into law in December.

The package of laws approved on Wednesday now only needs to be signed by President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has pitched the reform to a skeptical Mexican public along with a number of other changes meant to boost economic growth. Peña Nieto says the reform will provide as many as two million new jobs in the energy sector.