Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been a vocal critic of the energy reform of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, who opened in 2013 Mexico’s oil and gas sector to private investment for the first time in seven decades. Six months into office, the populist left-wing President López Obrador now blasts the energy reform as “a failure” and vows not to call new bidding rounds for foreign oil companies for oil exploration and production in Mexico unless those companies show results, because currently they are not investing and not producing. Two weeks into office, López Obrador suspended in December 2018 new oil auctions for three years. Last week, Mexico’s energy regulator CNH also canceled an auction to pick foreign partners for Mexican state energy giant Pemex scheduled for October. López Obrador seeks a greater role for Pemex in reversing the downward trend in Mexican oil production and is […]