Auctions scheduled later this year to pick joint venture partners for Mexican state oil company Pemex will proceed, an official at the national oil regulator said on Thursday, despite the president’s apparent cancellation of the tie-ups. An official with the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), the regulator that runs the auctions, said the joint venture auctions have not been canceled. “They’re still going forward,” said Martin Alvarez, head of the regulator’s exploration contracts unit, on the sidelines of an energy forum in Mexico City. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has scrapped two separate oil auctions involving mostly natural gas and shale projects, breaking sharply with his predecessor who pushed the tenders to try to reverse a […]