Photo: Deposit Photos

By KELIN DILLON

As the Mexican government continues its quest to give state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) majority control over the nation’s energy market, it has now closed a number of privately owned terminals used to import fuel across the country.

In the past month and a half alone, three terminals in Tuxpan, Puebla and Hermosillo were closed by the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE).

The now-defunct terminal in Tuxpan, Veracruz, was used to import fuel from Pemex’s competitors like Total, Repsol and Marathon, which operate 30 percent of the county’s gas stations in comparison to Pemex’s 70 percent.

“The government wants to return to having a gasoline monopoly,” said experts in the energy sector.

As the government’s Secretariat of Energy likewise begins arbitrarily cancelling import permits for ships carrying competition’s fuel alongside the terminal closures, consumers will no longer have a choice in their supplier and will return the market’s control to Pemex, said director of eServices Alicia Zazueta.