Mexican energy sector overhaul could reduce U.S. export demand

Chron / Katherine Blunt / August 6

 

An ambitious plan to boost Mexico’s oil and gas production could potentially slow the country’s energy sector reforms and hinder trade opportunities for U.S. refiners and pipeline companies that have ramped up exports to meet growing demand there, according to research firm Morningstar.

Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced late last month a plan to invest billions of dollars in Pemex, the country’s state-owned energy company, in an effort to  reverse years of declining production. He also reaffirmed his intent to review more than 100 exploration and production contracts awarded to private oil and gas companies since the 2013 reforms, which opened the country’s energy sector to foreign investment for the first time in decades.

Mexico’s energy reforms are enshrined in its constitution, and López Obrador has said that he will he will honor existing contracts so long as they don’t reveal corruption. But Morningstar noted that any effort to scale back the reforms or increase Mexican energy production could jeopardize some $200 billion in outside investments planned for the country’s oil and gas, power, refining and distribution sectors.

Part of López Obrador’s plan involves investing $2.6 billion to upgrade the nation’s six existing refineries as well as building a new, $8.6 billion refinery at the oil port of Dos Bocas in Tabasco. The country’s existing refineries have been operating at less than 70 percent capacity since 2012, according to Mexico’s energy department, requiring the country to import more gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products.

 

Chron / Katherine Blunt / August 6

 

Mexico’s Carlos Slim says best wall for Mexico and U.S. is investment, opportunities

Investing / Reuters / July 31

 

MADRID (Reuters) – Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim said on Tuesday that the best wall between Mexico and the United States was investment and job opportunities, referring to the U.S. President Donald Trump’s promise to build a border fence between the two countries.

“The best wall is investment and creating opportunities in Mexico,” Slim said during an strategy conference for the Spanish builder FCC (MC:FCC), of which he is the main shareholder, in Madrid.

Slim also noted that the United States and Central American countries need to make deals on investment and not just for trade.

 

Investing / Reuters / July 31

 

 

Mexican president-elect outlines oil sector rescue plans

Mexico’s incoming president has begun fleshing out his rescue plan for the country’s long-neglected oil sector.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposals include a $4bn capital injection for state oil company Pemex to boost exploration, a new refinery to slash reliance on US fuel imports and a 600,000 barrel-a-day increase in crude production in two years.

But analysts warn that his nationally focused energy policy risks putting unsustainable pressure on the world’s most indebted oil company. In particular, they point to plans for a 160bn peso ($8.6bn) refinery to be built in his home state of Tabasco over the next three years — an investment equal to the size of Pemex’s loss in the second quarter.

Mr López Obrador has not spelt out how he would fund his proposals but has named Octavio Romero Oropeza, a long-time confidante and agronomist from Tabasco, to take the helm of Pemex. “We are estimating overall investment to rescue the sector of 175bn pesos next year,” said the president-elect, who takes office on December 1.

The cash injection comes as Pemex has seen output fall from a peak of 3.4m barrels a day in 2004 to 1.866m in the second quarter this year.

Mr López Obrador said output was plunging because “the energy sector and oil industry were abandoned”, and has pledged to lift production to 2.5m b/d in two years.

He has yet to make clear whether he intends to continue with oil tenders that have seen more than 100 contracts awarded to 73 companies since 2015 under a landmark reform designed to lift Mexico’s oil output from a four-decade low. The new administration wants at least a temporary pause to oil tenders.

“Four billion dollars is a significant amount, there’s no doubt. But it is important to put it in perspective . . . One single tender round can inject more investment,” said Pablo Zárate at think-tank Pulso Energético.

Mr López Obrador has promised to achieve energy self-sufficiency by spending 49bn pesos upgrading Pemex’s six lossmaking refineries, where output has halved since May 2013, and building two new ones to halt dependence on US gasoline imports, which have increased by a third in the past two years.

But investors are alarmed at the potential for snowballing costs. The price tag for the first new refinery, to be built in Dos Bocas, has already risen from the $6bn Mr López Obrador’s team had previously indicated. “I don’t know of a single refinery that’s ever been done to budget,” said an investor at a large fund who follows Pemex closely.

Pemex, a monopoly for eight decades, has spent the past two years putting its finances in order and making huge outlays on new refineries could be a serious risk, say analysts.

“Pemex today does not have the cash or free cash flow to take on the construction of new refineries, and if the company decided to finance such an investment with debt or shift capital from exploration and production to refining, its credit metrics would weaken,” cautioned Moody’s Investors Service.

Ramping up refinery capacity could lead to Pemex halving the value of lucrative oil exports, it added.

But Mr López Obrador has said his government would keep its promise of halting gasoline imports in three years and would lower fuel prices.

Pemex has net debt of about $106bn and is expected to post earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of approximately $25bn this year. With the state taking about 70 per cent of profits in tax, Pemex could bump up its debt to pay for refineries — but it already has hefty debt repayments due in 2019 and 2020.

Mr López Obrador’s team has indicated that it wants to halt oil tenders while it reviews contracts awarded to date and decides on whether and how fast to continue auctions.

Indeed, the government has delayed two upcoming tenders, which include joint ventures with Pemex, until next February.

Adrián Lajous, a former Pemex chief executive, has called for a moratorium on oil auctions until 2020 but said joint ventures with Pemex should resume next year.

Even if oil tenders are put on ice, analysts are urging the new administration to allow Pemex to continue forging joint ventures.

“Partnerships will be needed to grow output — international companies bring capital and technical expertise,” said Ruaraidh Montgomery at Wood Mackenzie.

Above all “Pemex should start partnering with companies that specialise in enhanced oil recovery, given the maturity of its portfolio”, to allow it to squeeze more oil from existing fields, said Pablo Medina at Welligence Energy Analytics.

One radical revamp for Pemex could be to follow the “China model”, said Juan Carlos Zepeda, head of Mexico’s oil regulator, keeping the parent company in state hands, but spinning some assets into a partially listed unit, as China National Petroleum Corp has done.

“I would like us to do the same with Pemex but that would require changing the constitution,” he said.

This article has been amended to correct the amount of oil Pemex plans to increase production by in the next two years.

 

Financial Times / Jude Webber / 

 

 

Trump, Mexico expect progress in stalled NAFTA talks

Investing / Reuters / Anthony Esposito and Adriana Barrera / July 24

 

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump spoke warmly of Mexico’s incoming leftist president on Monday, saying he expected to get “something worked out” on NAFTA, while a top Mexican official said there was scope to revive the trade talks this week.

“We’re talking to Mexico on NAFTA, and I think we’re going to have something worked out. The new president, terrific person,” Trump said in a speech at the White House about American manufacturing.

“We’re talking to them about doing something very dramatic, very positive for both countries, he said, without giving more details.

Talks to reshape the 1994 trade accord have been underway since last August. But they stalled in the run-up to the July 1 presidential election in Mexico, which produced a landslide victory for veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The United States, Mexico and Canada have been at odds over U.S. demands to impose tougher content rules for the auto industry, as well as several other proposals, including one that would kill NAFTA after five years if it is not renegotiated.

Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo, who last week expressed hope an agreement in principle on NAFTA could be reached by the end of August, is due to hold talks with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at the end of the week in Washington.

He will be accompanied by Jesus Seade, the designated chief NAFTA negotiator of the incoming Mexican administration.

“There’s clearly a window of opportunity to be able to bed down a series of open issues which are not numerous, but are very complex,” Guajardo said on the sidelines of a summit of the Pacific Alliance trade bloc in the western coastal city of Puerto Vallarta.

Guajardo is due to meet his Canadian counterpart Chrystia Freeland on Wednesday, also to discuss NAFTA.

After the election, top officials from both the outgoing and new Mexican governments met in Mexico City with senior Trump administration officials led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Seade said the visit had sent out “excellent” signals.

“We hope these signals translate into a willingness to move forward,” Seade told reporters in Puerto Vallarta.

The talks have been clouded by tit-for-tat measures over trade after the Trump administration slapped tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum imports.

The United States is also exploring the possibility of imposing tariffs on auto imports, though Guajardo said it was too early to speculate on how that would play out.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said on Monday that South Korea had initiated the process of seeking associate membership in the Pacific Alliance, which comprises Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru and is seeking to deepen free trade.

Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Canada were last year admitted as associate members by the alliance. For Mexico, the expansion is part of a push to diversify its trading partners in the wake of Trump’s previous threats to pull out of NAFTA.

Guajardo indicated that despite his optimism about reaching a deal, risks still exist.

“The biggest risk is that instead of moving forward with an agenda of opening and integration, we move backwards, closing our economy and really undoing what we’ve built in the last two and a half decades,” Guajardo said.

 

Investing / /Reuters / Anthony Esposito and Adriana Barrera / July 24

 

First Phillips 66 Sites Open in Mexico

CSP Daily News / July 23 

 

EL PASO, Texas — Phillips 66 is opening its first retail sites in Mexico.

The Houston-based refiner, which owns the Phillips 66, 76 and Conoco brands, has a licensing agreement with fuel distributor Windstar LPG to open and operate branded sites in eight northern Mexican states, according to Arizona Public Media (AZPM). The first locations—three 76 branded sites—opened in Hermosillo, Sonora, on July 12. Another site was opening soon after in Chihuahua.

Reynold Gonzalez, CFO for El Paso, Texas-based Windstar, told AZPM that the company has “aggressive plans” for expanding in Mexico, with 25 to 30 branded locations slated for Sonora by the end of 2018.

Phillips 66 follows other U.S. and international refiners in entering the newly deregulated fuel market in Mexico, including ExxonMobil, Shell, Andeavor and BP.

Some industry observers have questioned whether Mexico’s new president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, might reverse the energy reforms launched in 2013 by his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, which included opening up the fuel market to foreign companies. Lopez Obrador said he would review the reforms if he discovered corruption in how contracts were awarded, Reuters reported; however, he has not announced any plans for rollbacks since winning the election in July.

Gonzalez of Windstar told AZPM that his company would not be opening locations in Mexico if it was concerned about a rollback, and that he believes U.S. competitors could help improve the quality of gasoline for fuel customers in Mexico.

“We are an example of a positive result of the energy reform act,” he said.

 

CSP Daily News / July 23 

 

 

California-based energy company building $150 million Mexico fuels terminal

Chron / Rye Druzin, Staff Writer / July 12

 

 

A California energy company is moving ahead with a $150 million fuels terminal in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Sempra Energy of San Diego is building the fuels terminal in Topolobampo, Mexico through its Mexican subsidiary Infraestructura Energética Nova, S.A.B. de C.V. or IEnova after the company secured a 20 year contract with the Topolobampo Port Administration.

The first phase of the project will have a storage capacity of 1 million barrels for fuels including gasoline and diesel. Sempra Energy expects operations to start in the fourth quarter of 2020.

In April Sempra Energy announced that IEnova would build a $130 million, 1 million barrel fuels terminal at Ensenada, a city in the Mexican state of Baja California.

San Antonio refiner Valero Energy Corp., the largest independent refiner in the U.S., signed a deal in August with IEnova to export refined product into Mexico. The gasoline, diesel and jet fuel would ship to new $155 million storage terminals IEnova will build in the Gulf of Mexico port city of Veracruz. Other storage terminals will be constructed in Puebla, southeast of Mexico City, and in Mexico city itself, to the tune of $120 million.

 

Chron / Rye Druzin, Staff Writer / July 12

 

US launches five dispute actions in WTO challenging China, EU, Canada, Mexico and Turkey

Merco Press / REUTERS / Yuri Gripas / 17 July

 

The United States launched five separate World Trade Organization dispute actions on Monday challenging retaliatory tariffs imposed by China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico and Turkey following U.S. duties on steel and aluminum. The retaliatory tariffs on up to a combined US$28.5 billion worth of U.S. exports are illegal under WTO rules, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.

“These tariffs appear to breach each WTO member’s commitments under the WTO Agreement,” he said. “The United States will take all necessary actions to protect our interests, and we urge our trading partners to work constructively with us on the problems created by massive and persistent excess capacity in the steel and aluminum sectors.”

Lighthizer’s office has maintained that the tariffs the United States has imposed on imports of steel and aluminum are acceptable under WTO rules because they were imposed on the grounds of a national security exception.

Mexico said it would defend its retaliatory measures, saying the imposition of U.S. tariffs was “unjustified.”

“The purchases the United States makes of steel and aluminum from Mexico do not represent a threat to the national security,” Mexico’s Economy Ministry said in a statement.

“On the contrary, the solid trade relationship between Mexico and the U.S. has created an integrated regional market where steel and aluminum products contribute to the competitiveness of the region in various strategic sectors, such as automotive, aerospace, electrical and electronic,” the ministry added.

Lighthizer said last month that retaliation had no legal basis because the EU and other trading partners were making false assertions that the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs are illegal “safeguard” actions intended to protect U.S. producers.

 

Merco Press / REUTERS / Yuri Gripas / 17 July

 

Amlo and the realities of Mexico’s oil reform

Petroleum Economist / Craig Guthrie / July 9

 

The Mexican president-elect needs a strong oil and gas sector to fund a promised social transformation

The investor-friendly tone Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, widely known as Amlo, struck in the run-up to his landslide victory on 1 July is fueling confidence he will tweak rather than dismantle the energy reforms that are enticing international oil companies to the country.

Prospects of an Amlo presidency had stirred concerns among investors for months ahead of the vote—he’s the first leftist Mexican president since the 1930s, and has forged an anti-elitist platform calling for a reordering of the political landscape. And yet the peso gained more than 2% against the US dollar in the hours after the result.

“This can be a presidency ruled by reason and legality,” Ixchel Castro, manager of Latin American oils and refining markets research with Wood Mackenzie, tells Petroleum Economist, while pointing to the currency market’s reaction and the links he’s built with Mexican business elites. “There may be change in the emphasis of the energy reforms, but we see a reversal as highly unlikely”.

Launched by outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2013, the reforms ended Pemex’s 75-year monopoly over the energy sector. So far, auctions in January and March jointly lured at least $100bn in oil exploration investment commitments from more than 70 different firms—useful revenue for a president who has promised sweeping social changes to tackle crime, corruption and poverty.

Amlo made opposition to the reforms a bedrock of his failed 2013 presidential bid, and told a rally just four months ago that he would never allow Mexican crude to return to the hands of foreigners. But a reversal in tack since has seen his top business adviser and nominee for chief of staff, Alfonso Romo, lead a pro-business public relations drive towards international investors.

Romo told Reuters on 25 June that there could be more auctions of oil drilling rights, as long as a review of contracts that have already been awarded to private companies showed no problems. “We will revise them and everything good will remain,” he said, noting that Amlo had said this directly to investors in New York.

But it’s not expected to be all smooth sailing for foreign oil investment under Amlo’s watch. Uncertainty over the long-term goals of his populist agenda will likely continue to unnerve companies looking to establish a steady pipeline of projects.

“Amlo will likely enjoy the benefits from the existing contracts that have been awarded, especially in terms of oil barrels produced, fiscal revenue received and jobs created. By the third year of his administration he can claim that Mexico is producing more oil under his presidency,” Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre wrote in an e-mail.

“But he will be reluctant to continue the bidding rounds. The one possible exception that I see would be in deep waters and in farm-outs from Pemex.”

Mexico plans to auction 37 onshore areas and nine in the shale gas-rich Burgos Basin on 27 September, as well as the farm-out of seven onshore areas with Pemex on 31 October.

Amlo’s approach to a planned re-shaping of Pemex is seen as the next critical indicator of his eventual intentions on the country’s energy direction.

While the president has pledged to resurrect Pemex into a strong national oil company through cost-cutting, this comes amid a significant decline in domestic energy production—from 3.4m barrels of oil a day in 2004 to 1.9m b/d in 2018.

“Pemex must be forced to compete in order to become stronger,” said Wood. “If the reform process is stopped, Pemex would gain from a strengthening of its position in the short-term. But in the long term its competitiveness and productivity could be severely damaged.”

 

Petroleum Economist / Craig Guthrie / July 9

 

 

Mexico Likely To Keep Making The World’s Biggest Oil Hedge

Baystreet Staff / Tsvetana Paraskova / Oilprice / July 9

 

The Mexican oil hedge, or the Hacienda Hedge, is considered the biggest hedging bet on Wall Street as well as perhaps the most secretive. It has earned Mexico—and a few large investment banks—billions of U.S. dollars.

Mexico buys put options from investment banks and typically hedges a whopping 200-300 million barrels of oil a year. With the put options, it has the right, but not the obligation, to sell oil at a previously set price and timing. But will this tradition continue under the newly elected administration?

Throughout his campaign, Mexico’s now president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador kept the oil industry on edge with comments and promises that he would review the landmark 2013 energy reform of outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto that ended seven decades of oil monopoly in the country.

But the first signals from Lopez Obrador’s staff and advisors after he won Mexico’s presidential election last weekend are that the new president would not seek to backtrack on the energy reform, which allowed foreign oil firms to win contracts to pump Mexican oil.

Leftist Lopez Obrador and the new government, set to take office on December 1, will also likely continue with Mexico’s annual oil hedging program—considered to be the biggest annual oil hedge deal on Wall Street—an economic advisor to the president-elect told Bloomberg this week.

For 2018, Mexico locked in last year an average export price of US$46 per barrel of crude oil with its oil hedge. According to data by Mexico’s Finance Ministry, the country spent the equivalent of around US$1.25 billion on the oil hedge program for 2018, which was 21 percent higher than the oil hedge in 2016 to lock in prices for 2017. Mexico’s spending on the world’s biggest oil hedge has been at around US$1 billion over the past few years. State-run Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is also hedging part of its production.

According to a member of president-elect Lopez Obrador’s economic team, Mexico’s oil hedge and the Pemex hedge are “working fine” and are likely to be left unchanged.

“The formula by which the government is calculating the price of oil is a very stable formula,” Abel Hibert told Bloomberg. “Using the hedges reduces uncertainty in financial markets,” the economic advisor said, adding, however, that the hedging program was not mentioned when energy policies were discussed at a meeting of the transition team this week.

Reducing uncertainty seems to be the key message from Lopez Obrador’s team after the election, even beyond the hedging program for oil.

Alfonso Romo, who is tipped to be the next president’s chief of staff, says that the new administration doesn’t want to create uncertainty and that there won’t be rescinding of the energy reform.

“What do we want to do? We want to take advantage of all of the enthusiasm we’ve generated to fix everything we can,” Romo told Bloomberg in an interview. “What don’t we want? To create uncertainty. Zero. I’m terrified of that.”

The incoming president’s chief of staff also said that he didn’t see changes to the 2013 reform.

“If anything happens, it would be done without hurting private investment,” Romo told Bloomberg.

With the energy reform of the outgoing president Peña Nieto, Mexico has attracted oil majors of the likes of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Eni to its offshore areas, as it seeks to reverse a decline in its oil production.

Mexico needs a lot of money for offshore drilling, and “no one will fight success” if it manages to boost oil production, according to Romo.

The president-elect Lopez Obrador has said that he would have the already awarded contracts scrutinized for irregularities. But neither Romo nor the likely incoming finance minister Carlos Urzua expects the review of the contracts to reveal acts of corruption.

“If it looks good, on we go. It’s a contract we have to respect,” Urzua told Mexican television on Wednesday.

We are still five months away from the new president and government taking office, but the first messages after the election point that Mexico wants to reassure foreign oil investors and seek reconciliation rather than confrontation.

 

Baystreet Staff / Tsvetana Paraskova / Oilprice / July 9

 

 

Trump and Mexico’s New Leader, Both Headstrong, Begin With a ‘Good Conversation’

The New York Times / Michael D. Shear and Ana Swanson / July 2

 

WASHINGTON — President Trump reached out to Mexico’s new populist president-elect on Monday in an early, but potentially short-lived, show of détente, saying the two leaders engaged in a “good conversation” about border security and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The two countries remain locked in a heated dispute over the fraught issues of immigration and trade, areas that may face difficult complications from the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leader known for being as strong-headed and nationalist-minded as Mr. Trump — and just as willing to engage in a public clash of ideas.

Mr. López Obrador, who has said Mexico will not be a “piñata” for foreign governments, has said he will stand up to Mr. Trump to protect his country’s interests. And he may find himself under pressure by an electorate that, weary of Mr. Trump’s hectoring and disparaging comments about Mexico, will demand that he cede no ground, leaving little room to manage the relationship.

“There are going to be so many opportunities for this to go wrong,” said Duncan Wood, the director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. “If there are too many provocations, if there are too many insults against Mexico, López Obrador will not be able to just sit back and take it. His character shows that he will respond, and that could lead us down a dark path.”

Relations between Mexico and the United States are already tense, particularly over trade and the future of Nafta, which has enabled companies to create critical supply chains across North America. Talks to revise the trade pact among Mexico, the United States and Canada have stalled over dramatic changes proposed by the Trump administration, including altering protections for investors and rules for manufacturing automobiles in North America.

Mr. López Obrador has been a longtime critic of the 1994 trade pact and has given no indiction he will be more willing to accommodate Mr. Trump’s demands than the current Mexican government. Among other things, Mr. López Obrador has blamed Nafta for triggering an influx of grain from the United States that ultimately forced Mexican farmers off their land.

But Mr. López Obrador has pledged to continue to renegotiate Nafta — a promise that could ultimately put him in the position of defending the trade agreement against the frequent criticisms of Mr. Trump, who has called it the “worst” trade deal in history and blamed Mexico for siphoning off American jobs. Mr. López Obrador’s advisers have said they will start working with the current Nafta negotiators soon to ensure a smooth transition when the new administration takes office on Dec. 1.

The president-elect has also taken a far more critical view than his predecessor of corporations — which have among the most to win or lose with a revised Nafta. He has long criticized the role of multinational corporations in Mexico and once promised to turn the presidential palace into a public park. He has promised to review dozens of outstanding oil and gas exploration contracts for corruption, potentially delaying hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment. His election has put the value of the peso and Mexican government bonds on a more volatile path.

During the campaign, Mr. López Obrador and his advisers worked to reassure voters and industry that he would provide continuity for the private sector.

Known as an anti-establishment candidate, Mr. López Obrador is a divisive figure with Mr. Trump’s flare for capturing attention. After a failed bid for the presidency in 2006 against Felipe Calderón, Mr. López Obrador held a faux inauguration ceremony for himself, appointed a shadow cabinet and protested in the middle of the capital for weeks.

Mr. Trump and Mr. López Obrador spoke for 30 minutes Monday morning after the latter ’s landslide victory Sunday night. The call came just hours after Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. López Obrador in a rare, friendly tweet that said: “I look very much forward to working with him.”

The incoming Mexican president in turn pledged never to “disrespect” the United States government. In a tweet of his own, Mr. López Obrador said there was “respectful treatment” on the call.

Any period of gracious talk may be short lived, however, with Mr. Trump almost certain to continue his tirade about the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, and Mr. López Obrador virtually guaranteed to fire back in ways that his predecessors did not.

Mr. López Obrador “has committed to a louder, more combative posture with the U.S.,” said Carlos M. Gutiérrez, the former secretary of commerce under President George W. Bush. “He’s getting ready to take it up a notch.”

Mr. Trump campaigned for the presidency by demanding a wall across the southern border and suggesting that people being “sent” from Mexico into the United States are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

More recently, Mr. Trump has escalated his language against Mexico, accusing Democrats in a tweet of wanting “illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13.”

 

The New York Times / Michael D. Shear and Ana Swanson / July 2