FACTBOX-Mexico energy reform debate

[AlphaCentauri]

March 31 (Reuters) - Following are the latest developments as Mexico's ruling conservatives court PRI and PRD opposition lawmakers to agree on an energy reform proposal aimed at revitalizing the country's flagging oil industry.

Snippets compiled from Reuters stories, Mexican newspaper reports, television and radio.

** Mexico will start afresh this week with multi-party talks on the oil sector, reducing the chances of passing a law before Congress winds up on April 30. After opposition to its idea of allowing private oil partnerships in a reform, the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, will present a new study on the industry's problems to opposition lawmakers, hoping to agree on a comprehensive reform proposal.

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** A left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, coordinator says the party is seeking talks with the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to form an agreement to block an energy reform in Congress if it is presented.

** PRI Sen. Rogelio Rueda, a member of the Senate energy committee, says the party could submit its own proposal if the government doesn't, given the urgent need for a reform.

** State energy monopoly Pemex is lagging in deepwater oil, having drilled just six exploration wells over the past five years, Exploration and Production Director Carlos Morales says. Each well cost between $70 million and $150 million.

** PAN Sen Juan Bueno says his party will suggest allowing deepwater joint ventures that would offer incentive fees of up to 20 percent rather than a share in oil drilled and penalizing the partners if a well does not strike oil.

** A survey in the daily El Universal shows 73 percent of respondents don't know what to expect in an oil reform but 51 percent think it should include changes to Pemex and 53 percent back using private investment to explore for new oil deposits.

** Firebrand leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sets up committees around Mexico to mobilize supporters to join blockades of highways, Pemex installations and Toluca airport near Mexico City as early as this week to protest proposals to lower barriers to private investment in oil.

** The PRD could be looking at another two weeks for the result of its contested March 16 leadership election between a moderate open to debating an oil bill in Congress and a more radical candidate seen backing Lopez Obrador's protests.

** PRD lawmakers and Lopez Obrador rejected Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's recent comments backing the idea of Pemex linking up with Brazil's state-run Petrobras in deepwater projects. PRI Sen. Manlio Beltrones welcomed the comments, however, calling the plan "imaginative."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN2837693220080331?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

[AlphaCentauri]

1. Mexico's comeback kid

MEXICO CITY -- As Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the leftist firebrand whom millions of Mexicans consider their legitimate president, made his way to the podium in the packed Zocalo plaza here March 18th, the 70th anniversary of the expropriation and nationalization of an oil industry now threatened with re-privatization, hundreds of senior citizens, AMLO's firmest followers, rose as one from their seats of honor at the side of the stage, raised their frail fists in salute, and chanted that, despite the cobwebs of old age, they do not forget. "Tenemos Memoria!" We Have Memory!

What did they remember? Tiburcio Quintanilla, 83, remembers how when President Lazaro Cardenas called upon his countrymen and women to donate to a fund to pay indemnities to the gringo oil companies, he went with his father to the Palace of Bellas Artes and stood on line for hours with their chickens, their contribution to taking back "our chapopote (petroleum).

" I was born in the same week that Lazaro Cardenas nationalized Mexico's oil, I tell Don Tiburcio. I'm only a kid.

Up on the same stage from which he directed the historic seven-week siege of the capital after the Great Fraud of 2006 that awarded the presidency to his right-wing rival Felipe Calderon, AMLO looked more grizzled, weather-beaten, a little hoarse after two years on the road relentlessly roaming the Mexican outback bringing his message to "los de abajo" (those down below) and signing up nearly 2,000,000 new constituents for his National Democratic Convention (CND), which is increasingly embroiled in a bitter battle for control of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD.)


Now Lopez Obrador has thrust himself into the leadership of the movement to defend the nation's oil industry (PEMEX) from privatization in the guise of Calderon's energy-reform legislation.


Calderon and his cohorts seek to persuade Mexicans that PEMEX is broken, the reserves running out, and the nation's only hope lies in deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling for what the Calderonistas describe as "The Treasure of Mexico" in a widely distributed, lavishly produced infomercial, will require an "association" with Big Oil. But as many experts, such as Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of the president who expropriated the oil in the first place, point out, it is not at all certain that these purported deep sea reserves are actually in Mexican waters.


AMLO's March 18th "informative assembly" of the National Democratic Convention was certainly the most emotional since he convoked the CND on Independence Day in September 2006, after the courts had designated Calderon as president. Poised under a monumental tri-color flag that furled and unfurled dramatically in the spring zephyrs, and addressing tens of thousands of loyalists in the heart of the Mexican body politic, Lopez Obrador told the story of Mexico's oil.


Oil is a patriotic lubricant here, and AMLO ...

http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=6027&catid=4&volume_id=317&issue_id=371&volume_num=42&issue_num=26

[Judi Lynn]

2. So good to see his name again, and learn he's not fading away. He should be sought out for the very

next election, and the next election should be scrutinized far more closely this time, with a LOT of international observers, if that's not too much to ask.