Photo: Iberdrola

By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF

A federal judge in the northern Mexican industrial city of Monterrey, Nuevo León,  warned Monday, Feb. 14, that denying permit renewals to the Spanish-owned Iberdrola energy company would have “devastating consequences” for the companies it supplies.

Iberdrola, one of several private Spanish-owned energy firms that have borne the brunt of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) constant (and unproven) allegations of the “unlawfully” sacking Mexico’s energy sector, would be negatively impacted by the president’s controversial electricity reform bill that would prioritize state-owned carbon-based energy sources over private clean energy alternatives.

AMLO has tried to block Iberdrola from renewing its energy permits as part of his open and ongoing war on Spanish power corporations operating in Mexico.

But Rodrigo de la Peza, a judge specializing in economic competition, said that by essentially closing the operations of Iberdrola by denying it the right to renew its permit, as AMLO would like, “would affect free economic competition” and would represent “an abrupt change within the electricity national market, which would affect the principle of legitimate investor trust.”

By granting a definitive suspension for the Iberdrola plant to continue supplying the facilities of Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma (now Heineken México) in Monterrey, De la Peza said that the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) would be negatively impacting the finances of Heineken and other Iberdrola customers.

Consequently, he said, based on initial examinations, that Heineken’s arguments will be sufficient to declare the CRE’s refusal to renew the permit illegal.

De la Peza added that Iberdrola’s permit has operated for 20 years and that its migration to a new federal modality under the CRE is regulated and has been granted in other cases.

He also noted that the CRE denied the new permit only for an administrative issue on the date it would have come into force, not for technical reasons.

The interconnection of the Monterrey plant with the National Electric System expired on Jan. 31, but the judge ordered the CRE, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and the National Energy Control Center (Cenace) “not to interrupt, restrict or alter the service it provides to Heineken.”