I don't know what the energy proposal of Claudia Sheinbaum. In the statements he speaks, once again, of a simple continuation of the policies applied by the President López Obrador. In private meetings he has talked about many other things, including the participation of the private sector in different areas and the commitment to clean energy, which would be consistent with his academic training.
Cuauhtemoc Cardenas yes we know that it has deep differences on many issues, and particularly in the energy field, with Lopez Obrador: Let us simply remember how the now president refused to even accept a broad Nation project that Cuauhtémoc had designed towards the elections of 2012 and had practically no participation in López Obrador's campaigns of 2006, 2012 and 2018.
It had been said that in this administration the director of Pemex I would be Lazaro Cardenas Batelthe son of Cuauhtemocwho in addition to his experience as governor of Michoacán had solid experience of several years in Washington and through family means has extensive knowledge of the parastatal and the oil market. Lopez Obrador He preferred to place one of his great friends in Pemex, Octavio Ramirez Oropeza, whose training, an agronomist, did not meet the requirements established to be director of Pemex, but who had been López Obrador's senior officer in Mexico City. Octavio Ramírez Oropeza, Rocío Nahle and Manuel Bartlett, in turn with frequent fights between them, were at the center of the disastrous energy policy that this administration has carried out.
Pemex in particular is a disaster from all points of view. The company is bankrupt despite the fact that the federal government has transferred billions of dollars to it in these five years and has embarked on very expensive projects such as Dos Bocas, almost 25 billion dollars, triple what was originally considered, a difficult cost to accrue because, for example, the Deer Park refinery that Mexico bought in Texas, produces from day one the same thing that Dos Bocas will one day produce and its total cost, assuming even the losses it had from its previous operation, was close to of one thousand 600 million dollars. Pemex's debt far exceeds one hundred billion dollars and the debt with suppliers that has tied up an entire sector of the country's private initiative is almost 300 billion pesos.
There is talk of protecting sovereignty and energy independence, but when such amounts of money are owed, no one is sovereign or independent, much less a company that international rating agencies consider almost on the verge of default. This is not the case because it receives enormous amounts of money from the federal government, but even in that way it cannot change its numbers. It is a company dependent on its lack of efficiency and its creditors.
Sovereignty is something else and no company is sovereign if its assets are less than its debts. The oil, or the national resources, are from Mexico, but no one says that they stop being so because there are private companies, national or foreign, that work in the sector. True sovereignty in this area would be for energy and especially gas to reach every corner of the country. Sovereignty also implies respecting international commitments and in the USMCA, in the environmental field and in the energy industry in particular, they are not being fulfilled.
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas supported Claudia's energy project on Monday, which the rest of us don't know about, and I imagine it will be because the Morena candidate's intention to become president will be to make Pemex something very different from what it is now. It is said, it is a rumor, that this support includes, which would be a success, that Lázaro Cárdenas Batel is the director of a company very different from the current one in a sector, the energy sector, that would have to be completely transformed, looking to other nations, such as Norway or Brazil, that have a strong public presence in it, but with extensive private associations and a completely different management than Pemex has had. A truly autonomous company. And it has been expanded, associated, to many other energy areas. In that sense, and in others, Xóchitl's proposal to transform Pemex into a large energy company, not just an oil company, is not bad.
I cannot imagine Cárdenas supporting Claudia's proposal without a true programmatic agreement for the sector. And Lázaro Cárdenas would have to play a central role in it.
Protected Natural Area
The federal government is rather uninterested in ecological preservation. It is betting on fossil energy and the worst of them, fuel oil, it does not care if it causes serious damage to the Yucatan Peninsula to build the Mayan Train, the resources for preservation are less every day (about ten thousand pesos per year per hectare) . But it has decided to use the formula of expropriating land and companies, declaring them protected natural areas. That applies to anything, from the Vulcán company in the Riviera Maya to the Huatulco golf course. The golf course thing is ridiculous. It is under concession until 2027, finish it and if they do not want to renew the concession, the government can keep it. It is in itself a protected area. Its closure affects an entire tourist community without any compensation for it. It violates the strategic design, so violated so many other times, of the tourist area of Huatulco. It is also a violation of legal security and is summarized in revenge and a whim.
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