Mexico Ponders How to Boost Faltering State Oil Company

McClatchy Washington Bureau ^ | Sunday, August 03, 2008 | iStockAnalyst

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

MINATITLAN, Mexico _ Pungent smoke billows from aging petrochemical plants here. Foul-smelling bluish water gathers in pools outside the walls. Fading paint announces the creaky Lazaro Cardenas refinery, a perfect metaphor for one of the world's biggest and most antiquated state oil companies. Petroleos Mexicanos employs more than 147,000 people and has long operated as a state within a state, with its own hospitals, pensions and integrated business operations.

snip----Workers warn that they'll fight downsizing.

"The energy reform should not harm the (labor) agreements. If it does, it won't fly," warned Jose Manuel Sanchez Urrita, a 24-year veteran of the Lazaro Cardenas refinery in Minatitlan and a member of the powerful oil workers union.

The Minatitlan refinery employed 3,781 workers last year at a facility that has the capacity to handle about 200,000 barrels per day of crude oil but processes about 170,000. The Shell Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, employs 950 workers while processing 275,000 barrels per day. When Motiva's expansion to 600,000 barrels per day is complete, it'll handle three times as much crude oil as Minatitlan with a third of the workers.

The extra jobs in Minatitlan and in other oil regions reflect that Pemex isn't just an oil company but also an engine for employment and economic development.

For better or for worse, much of southeastern Mexico depends on Pemex. For better, because the company has its own hospitals and health care system, and for worse, because Pemex facilities often are ringed by environmental disaster.

"Every day there are more (pipeline) ruptures that spill into the fauna, it makes it harder to protect the environment. They don't do anything to plant trees," complained Guadalupe Porras, the mayor of Minatitlan, who seeks a "more active participant" locally.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The fruits of socialism.

[headstamp 2]

Two words.

Foreign investment.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

These dingbats make Edith Bunker look like Anne Coulter.

Accept the offer of American oil companies to come in and maximize your drilling and refining.

You idiots in Socialist Mexico could be the next Saudi Arabia if you weren't such petty crooks.

[rodguy911]

Exactly there is nothing wrong with Mexico except a little drug dealing, a little corruption and a lot of criminals.

[ken21]

funny you say that!

i was just thinking about the people on this forum that want tariffs and to shut us out of the world.

[denydenydeny]

“Socialismo o muerte” isn’t really a choice.

Socialismo = Muerte.

[squarebarb]

Pemex is a mess.

That’s why we ought to drill here -— our environmental protection is so much better.

Another argument to give the moonbats.

I have traveled through that area and there are little tin pot refineries flaring off gas and pools of waste oil all over the place.

[AlaskaErik]

Privatize it.

[LFOD]

My brother spent many years in Mexico. He has maintained that the country has arable land, minerals, oil etc, etc.
The problem is it’s full of Mexicans. 10% carry the other 90%.

[truthguy]

Mexico may be the most Cluster-Fu*! country in the world. It's a mess on top of a mess. They have the natural resources to fix the problems. They have enough natural resources to be a rich nation but they don't seem to know how to use them. Everyone knows that they need foreign investment and technology to solve the problems in their oil industry. Mexico has had this oil for a very long time but did they ever invest their money in training petroleum engineering or create a university with an engineering school for this area? Maybe they did but it doesn't seem like it to me. I wonder how much of the money from their oil industry finds its was to Swiss bank accounts of the thieves who run Mexico.