Mexico spent some 24.1 billion pesos ($1.26 billion) on contracts to hedge its 2018 oil exports, Finance Ministry Chief Economist Luis Madrazo said on Tuesday, part of government’s efforts to stabilize its budget. Madrazo did not specify the number of barrels of export production that Mexico had hedged with derivatives contracts nor did he detail the average price per barrel of put options that the government has purchased. In September, the Finance Ministry proposed a 2018 budget that based expected oil export revenue on an estimate of $46 per barrel. Members of Congress increased that estimate to $48.5 per barrel earlier this month as global oil prices rose. For more than a decade, Mexico’s government has paid for a hedge every year in a bid to guarantee its revenues from oil exports by state company Pemex. The program is seen as the world’s top sovereign […]