The great Pemex business that went away 

It happened again. At the time, PRI members and PAN members made the most of oil and gasoline. The morenistas tried to do something similar, but it didn’t work out. 

They once again let go of the opportunity to generate global business with natural gas, a product that the current president ignores, an incomprehensible lack of vision. 

Look at what the US government published yesterday regarding an activity that has already exploded and is going to explode more in the world: 

“Three more countries began to import liquefied natural gas this year and more will follow,” was the title of the report signed by analysts from the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA), which explains the situation in Germany, the Philippines and Vietnam, as new product customers. 

They refer to the LNG business. The activity consists of extracting natural gas from the subsoil, taking it through pipelines to the coast, cooling it or liquefying it to compress it, uploading it to a ship similar to those old “banana splits” with scoops of ice cream, which then crosses the ocean and delivers it in a regasification terminal to deliver it to consumers. 

That saved Europe from urban freezing over the winter in the face of supply cuts from a Russia at war. Where do you think Qatar’s money for the FIFA World Cup came from? 

Natural gas also helps countries to reduce their emissions, since its combustion in turbines similar to those of airplanes generates electricity. With this, nations replace the use of coal, fuel oil or diesel. For these and other reasons, they demand it more than ever. The result?: 

“Global liquefied natural gas import capacity is expected to expand 16 percent, or 23 billion cubic feet per day by the end of 2024,” the EIA warned. 

“By the end of next year, we expect Antigua, Australia, Cyprus and Nicaragua to start importing LNG. Several more countries are in advanced stages of developing LNG import capacity,” he added. 

So far there seems to be no end to the opportunities in the business. In Argentina, the state oil company, YPF, signed a year ago with Malaysia’s Petronas to extract and export liquefied natural gas. 

Asia expands its regasification capacity: China adds 8.5 billion cubic feet per day; India will add 1.3 billion with the Dhamra LNG and Chhara LNG terminals in 2023. 

Due to corruption or lack of vision, previous governments focused their attention on extracting oil, which has a demand that is no longer growing, but which regularly delivers a high profit margin, ideally to the treasury. 

The current one openly bets on the production of gasoline despite warnings from all sides that hybrid and electric cars are rapidly advancing in public preference. 

There are national gas reserves, some of them close to the area that is making Texans richer. There are laws that allow extraction by Pemex or by private companies. Projects do not come to fruition probably due to ignorance. There are not many additional reasons. 

The situation is ridiculous. This country does not admit production through fracking, but imports tons of what was extracted through this process from the other side of the northern border. Our consumption is deficient before a Pemex that due to lack of investment resources from the State battles to increase the national extraction. 

The extreme: local governments celebrate the construction of a plant that will export LNG from Sonora, the project is owned by a Houston-based company called Mexico Pacific Limited, the gas will be imported from the United States and then shipped from national soil. Mexican corridor for rent… at low cost. 

Op-ed by: Jonathan Ruiz Torre 

 Source: El Financiero