AMLO’s energy agenda will prioritize local fuel production

Mexico’s next energy agenda will prioritize increasing gasoline and diesel production and later decide on possible changes to the industry reform championed by the outgoing government, according to a top aide to President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador .

Rocío Nahle, tapped by López Obrador to be energy minister

, told local outlet Aristegui Noticias on Wednesday that the country’s next government will address the “energy imbalance” in which Mexico produces less fuel at home and turns to imports to meet national demand.

López Obrador won a landslide victory in the July 1 election and will take office in December .

“We will be assessing if any legislative changes (to the oil opening) are necessary,” said Nahle, adding that the transition team would not immediately propose changes to the existing laws.

The comments by Nahle, who also won a Senate seat in the election, are in line with López Obrador’s pledge last weekend to end Mexico’s massive fuel imports over the first three years of his term.

Mexico’s president-elect López Obrador will seek to lower gas prices in three years

So far this year, Mexico has imported an average of about 590,000 barrels per day (bpd) of gasoline and another 232,000 bpd of diesel , almost all of it from the United States , as gasoline output at the country’s six refineries owned and operated by state-run Pemex has halved since 2013 , the first year of outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto’s term.

Domestic gasoline output barely meets a quarter of national demand from the country’s legions of motorists.

During the election campaign, López Obrador was sharply critical of Peña Nieto’s policy to allow foreign and private oil companies to operate fields on their own for the first time in decades, ending Pemex’s monopoly.

The overhaul was designed to reverse a decade-long oil output slide and has already resulted in competitive auctions that have awarded more than 100 exploration and production contracts , deals López Obrador has repeatedly promised to review for signs of corruption.

Nahle said the next government will also begin construction of at least one new oil refinery , which she expects to be operating by the halfway point of López Obrador’s six-year term.

So far this year, Pemex’s existing refineries are producing an average of 220,000 bpd of gasoline and about 125,000 bpd of diesel , according to company data.

dm