Of course I forgot to put my own thoughts on this. A year and half ago I visited Mexico (with an American delegation that included Cynthia McKinney) to a conference on privatization sponsored by various energy unions in Latin America. In fact it was held at the SME headquarters, the one now occupied by the Federal Police in their attempt to break the union.
The move toward privatization was, then, the single biggest issue in Mexican politics. The corruption IS terrible and funds are siphoned away by both the rich and the corrupt union leaderships. The unions are affiliated to the PRI opposition. Unlike the independent SME, the oil unions are not influenced by the socialist left nor even the very reformist PRD. Militants in these unions presented PEMEX as not unlike PDVSA prior to Chavez and played the same role. As David S. notes, the main issue outside privatization and corruption is the obvious uninvestment in existing fields and the known new fields that exist in places like Chiapas. The demand of the militants is "more investment". I don't know much about the derivatives of the industry or what PEMEX was playing with regards to them. Venezuela and Brazil have very interesting and similar problems. The both have this incredibly vast hydro resources but both are sometimes hundreds, and in the case of Brazil, even thousands of miles from where their power exists. Bot countries get between 70% and 80% of their electricity from this renewable resource. They both are partly trying to solve the issue by running high voltage DC lines, or more of them, from the dams to cities. Both are also expanding these resources. Both are moving toward more local generation, either gas or nuclear. Brazil, for example, has remarkably few combined cycle gas turbines. I don't know why but probably over confidence in expanding hydro resources. On Venezuela, the numbers PDVSA says they produce in oil is about 35% higher than international petroleum institutes say they do. And, there are now accusations that PDVSA is also under investing, albeit no where near the problem in Mexico. I read the mostly conservative energy industry web sites, like Energy Tribune, who, besides being climate change deniers, tend to down play any accomplishments by countries like Cuba and Venezuela when it comes to petroleum issues. But there is always some truth and finding that out is an important task. I'll try to regularly contribute information here on energy issues like this. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
