Mexican legislators to fight energy reform

Mexican legislators to fight energy reform

Mexico City (Platts)--25Sep2006

Opposition legislators vowed at the weekend to launch a united front
against energy reforms proposed by President-elect Felipe Calderon.

The Front for the Defense of Energy Sovereignty will be launched
Wednesday, the legislators said in a press statement. Calderon has not laid
out the plan for energy reform that his administration will propose after it
takes power December 1, but he has argued for the opening of the
state-monopolized eletricity sector to private competition and for a change in
the Constitution that would allow state Pemex to form alliances with foreign
companies for deep-water oil exploration.

Calderon's pro-business party, the PAN, lacks an overall majority in
Congress, where the leftwing PRD -- a firm opponent of energy reform -- is the
main opposition force.

The PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for an unbroken seven decades until
2000 is divided on the issue. The PRD, and some members of the PRI, have long
argued argued against what they see as a 'creeping privatization' of the
energy sector through initiatives such as the multiple service contracts
awarded for natural gas production in northern Mexico and the growing reliance
on private power generators.

Many members of the PRI, however, appear willing to embrace reform. 'The
energy sector can't stay as it is; that's not an option,' said Cesar Camacho,
an influencial PRI member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the
Mexican Congress.

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