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MEXICO CITY - A political row in Mexico over an oil reform plan intensified at the weekend as a TV ad compared a firebrand leftist leading a siege of Congress to 20th century dictators Hitler and Mussolini. Funded by a Mexican businessman angry at a 10-day blockade of Congress by opposition left-wing lawmakers, the television ad says the antics of protest leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are endangering democracy in Mexico. Leftists seized Congress podiums on April 10 to block a government proposal to lower barriers to private investment in the oil sector, controlled by the state since 1938. "Who...

MONTERREY, Mexico — For a voting bloc that doesn't control Congress, this nation's main leftist party is doing a good job of running the show. More than a week has passed since Democratic Revolution Party lawmakers draped a huge banner over the dais in the lower house announcing it was "CLOSED," like a construction site without a permit. On Thursday, they chained shut the chamber's doors and their allies in the streets forced senators, also evicted from their chamber, to cut short an attempt to hold a session elsewhere in Mexico City. Lawmakers eventually found alternative locations, reached a quorum...

Mexico's leader sees potential in progress of Petrobras Guillermo Najera, a 42-year-old machine operator at Mexican state-controlled oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, gets paid to do nothing all day. Pemex management can't fire the union worker or transfer him from the ammonia plant in Ciudad Camargo, where he still shows up for work even though the plant stopped production in 2002. "We don't have anything else to do except keep our areas clean," Najera says as he and dozens of other idle workers enter the gates of the plant for the 7 a.m. shift. "I want to go back to work."...

With oil prices at dizzying heights, the world could use as much oil as possible. Don't count on Mexico to help. Mexico's oil output is falling, and the country could cease to be a major oil exporter in a few years. That's bad news for the world -- and for the U.S. in particular. Mexico is one of its top-three sources of foreign oil. If Mexico can't turn things around, U.S. dependence on Middle East oil will grow. Mexican President Felipe Calderón is frantically trying to strike a deal to allow private oil companies to work with state monopoly Petróleos...

Output is declining rapidly, but national pride and politics may block possible fixes. MEXICO CITY -- With crude oil topping $95 a barrel, these should be heady days for Petroleos Mexicanos. Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, known as Pemex, generated record revenue of about $100 billion in 2007. But at a ceremony marking the 69th anniversary of the nationalization of Mexico's oil industry last year, Pemex General Director Jesus Reyes Heroles wasn't in a celebratory mood. "The situation of Petroleos Mexicanos is critical and merits immediate attention," the company's top executive said. Indeed, 2007 tapped a gusher of concerns for the...

MEXICO CITY -- Six explosions ripped apart pipelines for Mexico's state oil monopoly early Monday, the company said. The blasts were believed to be sabotage and 12,000 people were evacuated afterward.

At least 4 states lose natural gas source in attacks on key pipelines MEXICO CITY — Hundreds of companies, including multinationals such as Honda and Hershey's, shuttered operations temporarily on Wednesday after a shadowy rebel group claimed responsibility for a series of explosions of key petroleum pipelines. Near-simultaneous blasts carried out just after 1 a.m. Tuesday in central Queretaro state cut off natural gas supplies to at least four states in central Mexico. The region was still reeling from a round of pipeline explosions July 5 in neighboring Guanajuato state. "There can't be fewer than 800 or 1,000 medium and...

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's state oil monopoly is in "critical" condition and needs to boost exploration and seek outside expertise to replenish oil reserves that are currently set to last less than a decade, energy officials said Sunday. President Felipe Calderon, however, said during a ceremony marking the 69th anniversary of the nation's oil nationalization that there are no plans to privatize the industry and that Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, "will always continue to belong to all Mexicans." Pemex's proven reserves have fallen to the equivalent of 9.3 years of production from 9.7 years in 2005, and daily output declined...

Mexican National Oil Monopoly in Debt Crisis on 69th Anniversary of Its Expropriation MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Depleted reserves, crumbling pipelines, outdated technology and billions of dollars in debt. It doesn't seem much to celebrate when Mexico commemorates the 69th anniversary of the nationalization of its oil monopoly Sunday. In fact, energy experts say Mexico's oil industry needs to launch a rapid rescue plan and stop looking back to its storied past. Government leaders and executives at Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, have been warning about the problems for years. But they haven't taken much action, in large part because the...

Posted by Baja Cactus, owner of the Pemex station and motel in El Rosario. The Mexican government sets the price each month. As you all may already know, the last of every month, Pemex changes the fuel prices...usually only a couple of cents. So, here you go the prices for October 2005... Magna............$ 6.12 pesos per liter Premium..........$ 7.23 pesos per liter Diesel.............$ 5.06 pesos per liter These prices are in liters, and 1 gallon = 3.7854 liters. Today (october 4th) 1 dollar = $ 10.70 pesos (+/-) Using the previous information, this is what we have.... Magna............$ 2.165 dollars...

México. Pemex, the Mexican oil monopoly, is studying an alliance with Anglo-Dutch Shell to develop a crude oil deposit in the Gulf of Mexico, near the maritime boundary with the US, according to newspaper El Universal de México. The newspaper cites sources close to the project and Secretary of Energy Fernando Elizondo, who acknowledged that Shell is interested and that "there have already been contacts". "But we have to adjust our activities absolutely to the legal framework", he emphasized. "We have to resolve this matter quickly because there is a risk that someone could beat us" to the development of...

: New Report By Baker & Associates on Political Timetable of Project Fenix HOUSTON, June 7 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report by Baker & Associates, Energy Consultants, documents the efforts by the Fox administration to reverse a ten- year decline in Mexico's petrochemical industry and a history of false starts in attracting private capital. In 2002, Pemex began seeking private investors for a US$2.6 billion, million-ton ethylene complex. The Mexican chemical market, meanwhile, needs more than $10 billion of imports annually. Project Fenix features two innovations: Pemex would be a minority partner and the Oil Union would not have automatic...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. With the prospect of declining reserves, rising extraction costs, and recent poor record of exploration in their traditional fields of operation the international oil 'majors' need better access to untapped oil fields in the Middle East and Russia. However, easy to express in words, the actual process itself promises to be rather arduous. While under heavy pressure from the need to preserve the returns their investors expect, the international oil companies (IOCs) are less welcome in oil-producing countries: increased nationalism and consistently higher crude prices have reduced many governments' need for...

After spending several years starting oil exploration crews for Pemex and re-reading Atlas Shrugged, I think I have The reason Mexico has become so bad. I like the Mexican people in the fly over parts of Mexico. The mid level and workers of Pemex are good. It is the government and the high up in Pemex that are the vultures and looters. The peso was about 8 cents (12.5 to a dollar). When Pemex found the sito grande, a very large oil pool that covers parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco also a long ways into the Gulf...

New Factors Driving the Debate By U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo The Denver Post The national debate over immigration policy and border control has changed dramatically over the past year, and prospects for genuine immigration reform have improved as a result of the November election. Three developments have changed the lay of the land. First, we now know that there is no "Hispanic vote" that's demanding a broad amnesty for illegal aliens. President Bush got 40-44 percent of the Latino vote, but he achieved this level of support without any help from the immigration issue. If he keeps pushing his "temporary...

Mexico's oil giant forks over so much money to the state that it's deeply in debt, and a price drop could set off a crisis.World oil prices are at near-record highs, and Mexico is pumping and exporting more crude than ever before. The country is the world's seventh-largest oil producer and one of the top three suppliers to the U.S., up there with Canada and Saudi Arabia. Yet state oil monopoly Petreolos Mexicanos (Pemex), a giant with $55.9 billion in revenue, is hardly thriving.Indeed, in recent years the company has only been able to make ends meet through massive borrowing,...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said it made its first deep-water oil discovery this month, uncovering a deposit that could contain more than 200 million barrels of crude oil equivalent.The Nab deposit in the Campeche Sound, Pemex's main oil-producing zone, contains a very heavy crude with an API gravity of 9, according to a Pemex document.Pemex contracted Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO) to drill the well at a depth of 681 meters (2,230 feet), which produced an initial flow of 1,200 barrels a day.Pemex estimated that original volume in the deposit could exceed 200 million...

MEXICO CITY - Amid rising concern over world energy supplies, a new problem may be sneaking up on the United States from the South.Fot three decades, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly has reaped the easy money, skimming the cream off fabulous deposits and becoming a top U.S. crude supplier.Now, with the low-hanging fruit mostly picked, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, must decide where to drill next.The logical place: the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Oilmen are already teeming on the U.S. side of the maritime border. But Pemex largely lacks the money and know-how to do the job, and Mexico...

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 31(UPI)--The Mexican state oil monopoly Pemex Tuesday opened negotiations with the multinational Shell to exploit oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.Pemex sources close to the negotiations said that though alone Pemex is trying to bring about a deal with the U.S. arm of the Shell Group, Mexico President Vicente Fox has interest in accerating an agreement before he concludes his term in 2006.The alliance would be useful for the joint exploration of new deep oil reserves recently discovered in the Gulf of Mexico which Pemex estimates to be around 54 billion barrels.Pemex and Shell Exploration and...

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 30 -- Officials at Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly said Monday that the company had detected massive new oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico that could potentially double the country's reserves, but industry analysts cautioned that the company's findings are still unproven.'snip'Industry analysts cautioned that the figures were based on scientific estimates, not actual drilling. They said the findings, if proven, would be encouraging news in a country that produces about 3.3 million barrels of oil per day and is among the top three suppliers to the United States."No one has doubted that Mexico had tremendous potential,...