BY VÍCTOR MAYÉN
The News
The draft of the energy reform bill will not be ready until next Friday, David Penchyna Grub, president of the Senate Energy Committee announced on Wednesday.
Penchyna Grub, a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said that legislators from different political parties are still working to reconcile their differences, though he added that an agreement is not far off.
“Things are on the right track. I am confident we will be able to get the votes needed,” Penchyna Grub said.
An important hurdle to passing the energy reform was overcome on Tuesday when the Senate passed a political-electoral reform designed to increase electoral transparency, which the opposition National Action Party (PAN) insisted must be approved before voting could begin on the energy reform.
The PRI and PAN, which together have enough votes to pass an energy reform, agree that the Mexican Constitution should be modified to allow for private participation in Mexico’s currently nationalized oil industry. However, they differ on how far-reaching the reform should be. While the PRI’s proposal would only allow for profit-sharing contracts, the PAN would allow for production-sharing contracts and concessions to private companies.
“I can tell you that if the text does not include instruments (beyond profit-sharing), the PAN will not vote for it,” PAN Deputy Juan Bueno Torio said. “Companies don’t like profit-sharing contracts and neither do we. Nor will the PAN support it if there is no mechanism that states that oil income is destined for a sovereign oil fund.”
PRI Senator Javier Treviño said the negotiations need to involve a willingness to compromise so that they can reach a middle ground,
especially as the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) will not be participating in the energy reform discussions. “I think there will be more options, so we can look at and analyze the subject of production-sharing,” Treviño said.
The PRD opposes opening government-owned oil monopoly Pemex to private investment in any form, arguing that Pemex’s falling production rates could be reversed if the company — which currently pays 90 percent of its revenue in taxes — was given budgetary autonomy from the federal government.
Former PRD presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has since left the party, has led a series of protests against what he said was the privatization of Mexico’s oil, while the PRD itself has gathered signatures to put the proposed constitutional reforms up to a popular vote during the next federal elections in 2015.
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