PEMEX - Time Running Out?

For nearly a year I have been noting that Pemex is in trouble, and each passing month is yet another step down the slippery slope. President Calderon has offered up legislation to engage foriegn oil companies (mostly the nationalized ones) in partnership with Pemex. The foriegn companies have the resources that Pemex lacks to drill for deep oil and develop new reserves. Calderon's opponent in the Presidential elections, Obrador, is having none of it. The longer it takes to get funds to Pemex, the longer before they pump new oil. Pemex' importance to the Mexican economy, more specifically its budget, cannot be overstated. Add the impact of declining revenues to declining remittances (Washington Post, free subscription may be needed) and I can't help but feel a significant Mexican problem is going to wind up on the streets of America, and I mean that literally.

My paternal grandparents came here in 1900 to create a new life, but they weren't running from a country that is reliant on a declining industry (oil) and money from emigrant relatives. Mexico's poorest will come here looking for work so they can survive, and no doubt to the relief of the political elites and economic upper class. Americans who raise an outcry will be lambasted as xenophobes by well meaning advocates for social justice and self serving publicity hounds in search of a klieg light; legal immigrants will get hammered along with their illegal peers as a drain on society (they all look and act alike you know); and all of this heat will shed no light on the solutions that Mexico must find.

America does not hold the solution to Mexico's economic problems. Cultural pride has swung, in some sectors, so far off the scale as to endanger the country's well-being. Simply sending the poor over the border to relieve the political and economic pressure besetting the country is no answer. But right now there is no evidence that the politicians are able to get their act together if the imbroglio over Pemex is any indication. Time may be running out for Pemex, and by extension for Mexico's ability to recover any hope of reinvigorating their oil industry and keeping some economic stability.