Mexico’s love affair with Pemex: will its bid to avoid wasting the fallen oil large block the shift to wash power?
Once providing half of Mexico’s revenue, the debt-laden state oil firm has been in decline for years. But government efforts to revive it in pursuit of energy self-sufficiency is stalling the drive for renewables
Read more: Latin America forges ahead on new oil frontier
The coastline of Tabasco, a waterlogged and oil-rich state on the Gulf of Mexico, is a tangle of mangroves and pipelines belonging to Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned hydrocarbons company. Its new $17bn (£13bn) Olmeca refinery at Dos Bocas, in President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s home state of Tabasco, symbolises his commitment to reviving Pemex and making the country energy self-sufficient – even if it means going all-in on oil.
But storms, floods and rising sea levels have put Mexico’s coastal life at risk. “With climate change, the floods are getting out of control,” says Lilia Gama, an ecology professor in Tabasco. “They last longer, spread further [and] accumulate in certain places. And this is no longer necessarily enriching the soil as it used to – it is causing the vegetation to rot.”
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