Posted on 07/02/2006 1:02:47 AM PDT by txdoda
(06-30) 04:00 PDT Cardenas, Mexico -- Gonzalo Rodriguez has an unenviable task as the boss of a major oil field -- ripping out a large part of the pumping and compressing machinery that collects the output from scores of wells.
"Unfortunately, we don't need this capacity anymore," he said. "This isn't like the old days, and they aren't coming back."
Like much of Mexico's giant oil production apparatus, this area, known as the Bellota oil field, is in an apparently unstoppable decline. At current extraction rates, the nation has only 10 years of proven oil reserves remaining. And as Mexico prepares to vote in Sunday's presidential election, the leading candidates disagree bitterly about what, if anything, can be done to halt the impending collapse of the industry that forms the backbone of the national economy.
Left-of-center candidate Andres Lopez Obrador wants to de-emphasize production of crude oil and focus instead on refined products such as gasoline and plastics, while his main challenger, conservative Felipe Calderon, proposes opening the industry to foreign oil corporations to help increase crude exports.
Because Mexico is the second-largest source of U.S. oil imports, the outcome of this struggle will have a huge effect on U.S. energy security in the coming decades. Oil income accounts for more than 40 percent of the Mexican federal government's annual revenues, so the decline of oil output could leave the country's next president with a nightmarish budget crisis.
Oil industry experts say that whoever wins Sunday's election will be forced to play an increasingly weak hand of economic cards........
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
"Lopez Obrador wants to de-emphasize production of crude oil and focus instead on refined products."
I suspect that what he wants to do is increase Mexico's manufacturing base, rather than shipping all the crude to the US, where we do the manufacturing. More refined products produced in Mexico, fewer illigals?
Mexico is very resistant to foreign economic intervention. Years ago when I studied there I was surprised to discover that foreigners could not buy beach front property. You had to have a Mexican partner to get around that one.
Perhaps Mexico will be able to expand its sugar cane production like Brazil to achieve less dependence on petroleum for transport. Does anyone know the potential for that?
My wife and her late husband got sucked in on that one. They bought property in Baja CA, with a local as "front man," then lost it all during a currency devaluation. No way I'd ever invest a penny in Mexico.
The illegal invasion has been going on for years, your thread was posted in 2004. As you said than the illegals are coming to rape and pillage and they still are.
For years the borders were left wide open and basically they still are. The open border advocates insist it should be left open for cheap labor. Cheap labor is costing the American taxpayer a fortune not to mention the dangers because of the illegals. They aren't all "good hard working nice people".
With the upcoming election we have no idea who will be the neighboring country's leaders. Fox is bad enough. What if we get a Chavez-like neighbor? Our Congress along with all the amnesty-loving-open-border-guest-worker lovers are placing this entire country and taxpayers in jeopardy for many reasons and yet they have the audacitiy to call us who can see the dangers names.
The illegals are NOT for "Truth, Justice and the American Way". They are raping and pillaging this country and it's citizens!
"Like it or not, North American Union here we come."....only if we're negligent in how this is accomplished. Would make more senes to "annex", for starters, the six Mexican border states....as the next six American states. TRhey really could use a dose of the Dept of Justice to clean them up.......
It's also a way of life in China and any other country that our companies send their jobs off to. Someone in that foreign country has to be the master for our stockholders.
It does not make much sense to build refineries with a declining production base unless they anticipate cutting off exports of crude oil, and then not much. If they cannot feed the refineries, what good are they? Are they going to import crude, refine it, and export products? Something here isn't making a heck of a lot of sense to me.
The oil patch question comes in the context of the broader question of how do you make Mexico a first class country. This is something that Vincente Fox has brought up frequently recently.
The trouble is that no one quite sees that the very best thing we could do for Mexico is to send their now well trained citizens home.
Suddenly Mexico would have a skilled workforce who knew something about how a world class country worked.
Think these folk would propel a great leap forward for Mexico?
I do.
Basically the ruling class in Mexico is preditory to its own detriment and will not change of its own volition--even if those changes were in its own interest. But it can be forced to change.
The Mexicans in the USA have had the picture of what a well run country looks like tatooed on the back of their eyeballs. And they'll have an idea of how to get there. Send them back to Mexico and they'll get a revolution in Mexico that'll do that country some good.
The shock troops for that would be the 12 million repatriated Mexican citizens. Having seen what a well run country looks like they would not want to be stuffed back in the old wineskin.
There's something more.
I follow water desalination research pretty closely. While water desalination costs have dropped to about a third of what they were 15 years ago--the rate at which prices will drop over the next seven years will accelerate considerably. imo in even the next five years we will see desalination costs drop to 1/10th of today's costs. Or even faster than the fall the 3/4 fall that the LLNL researchers suggest.
http://www.physorg.com/news67262683.html
Basically, the foundations are being laid today to make it economically feasable to to turn all the world's deserts green. (The proper way to look at this is to recall that cars, tv's and computers were at first rich men's toys but when prices came down they changed the world. Desalinised water is still relatively speaking -- a rich man's toy. But when the price drops sufficiently--desalinised water will change the world--because most deserts are right beside the ocean. Pumping the water 1000 miles inland will require that the scientists collapse the cost cracking out hydrogen from water. I think that this nut will be cracked sooner than desalination.)
imho cheap desalinised water will do for the republicans (if they can get this on their agenda or even the democrats if the pubbies drop the ball) what the great dam building projects & the tva of the 1930's & 40's did for democrats because 1/3 of the US is deserts. We would increase the habitable size of the USA by 1/3.
Dirt cheap desalinised water will also do things like make it possible to double the habitable size of Mexico. Cheap water is no magic bullet but it will give the Mexican Nationalists a way to dream while the Mexican people do the real work.
A first generation crop that might be appropriate would be one that India has chosen for ist biofuels program. The crop is Jatropha Curcas - a bush. This shrub produces a seed containing oil. This oil works well for biodiesel production ( see http://www.d1plc.com ).
Jatropha Curcas is native to Mexico and Central America (probably originated there). This shrub can be grown in large plantations on marginal soil - assuming some reasonable amount of, say, desalinated water).
Think Jatropha Curas could take up the slack from current oil production? I do.
And desalinated water in tandem with repatriation of now skilled Mexican citizens would propel Mexico into being a world class country.
Oh and one last thing. Mexico will need a stronger dose of of the Peruvian Hernando Desoto ideas. Basically DeSoto asked the question why are some countries poor and some countries rich. The basic answers is that in poor countries most of their economy is informal or off the books and their property--ie--land is not formally recognized. (Therefor these countries have no borrowing power.)De Soto's solutions are being implimented successfully in countries around the world. http://www.ild.org.pe/home.htm
Hernando de Soto's organization was invited to Mexico and did some work on the question. He says that only 6 percent of Mexican enterprises are legal, the rest are informal or off the books. So how do you reverse that so that only 6% of the economy is informal -- as is the case the USA. De Soto would provide the ideas around which the 12 million american trained Mexican returnees could rally.
There is a winner here. The winner is Mexico.
The US profits too by having a prosperous politically stable country with a broad middle class to the south as we do to the north.
Swell... another reason to become a criminal alien in the USA...
"Without oil, the government won't have a source of income independent of the people"
You do not understand the "third world" socialist mentality. It's not how much you have it's that you control whatever you do have.
Mexico is in no more danger of getting less corrupt, less competent government or more freedom and economic development with oil than without oil.
If they had and respected a system of laws and property ownership, what you say might occur, but without a legacy of ownership and freedom, all the decline in oil production means to the average mexican is there will be less luxury consumed by the ruling class.
This is precisely WHY Mexico's oil is running out. If you don't own mineral rights under your own land, or explore in competition with the government, then where's the incentive to find more oil?
Sure doesn't, either in mexico, @ our borders, or @ the gas pumps.....
Fox's *suggestions haven't counted for awhile now.....
the outcome of today's elections should be very interesting.
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