By KELIN DILLON Following the approval of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial energy bill by Mexico’s lower congressional house on Wednesday, Feb. 24, the private sector is speaking out in a last-ditch effort to stop the bill’s ratification in the Senate. The new bill would give Mexico’s state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) priority uploading of its energy
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Cabeza de Vaca Jumps the Gun After Tamaulipas Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, along with his fellow National Action Party (PAN) deputies, headed by minority leader Carlos Romero Hicks, took the facility nearly by storm on Wednesday, Feb. 24, and held a press conference claiming that he was a victim of a witch hunt being directed
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Electricity Bill It will come as no surprise for most people in Mexico that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) Electricity Reform Bill was approved by the Chamber of Deputies, as programmed by Congress’ majority rule, now in the hands of the leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) political party, and will now head to the Senate. If
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS When more than 4.7 million homes in the north of Mexico were left without light or heating on Monday, Feb. 15, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was quick to resort to his favorite stock scapegoat for the subsequent humanitarian and economic repercussions: Blame it on past administrations. True to form, rather than assuming responsibility for the
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Electricity Reform Bill Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on Sunday, Feb. 21, pleaded with Congress to pass his electricity reform bill. “I hope next week the (electricity) reform I presented to Congress will be approved to help strengthen the (state-owned) Federal Electricity Commission (CFE),” he said. AMLO spoke about the electricity bill in two acts
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Texas Gas Shortage The Arctic vortex that hit Texas and the north of Mexico on Monday, Feb. 15, did not catch the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) unprepared, said the commission’s director, Manuel Bartlett Díaz. The cold spell was expected, and the subsequent gas shortage it produced was also to be expected, he said, but not just for
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By KELIN DILLON Mexico’s National Energy Control Center (Cenace) has been planning strategically timed blackouts across the country to help reduce energy consumption following a low supply of natural gas, which have now been affecting parts of Mexico that were never planned to lose power. Northern Mexico mainly uses gas to generate its energy, and the Texas pipeline that brings
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Outages Set Off Political Sparks The electricity outages on Monday, Feb. 15, in six northern Mexican states may have been caused by the freezing temperatures affecting Texas, but they set off a new round of heated debates at Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies over President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO’s) Electricity Bill. Beyond Texas’ pumped gas shortage,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO MLK III at Guerrero Homage Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of U.S. civil rights activist MLK, Jr., was the keynote speaker Sunday, Feb. 14, at the homage paid to the memory of Mexico’s second president, Vicente Guerrero. Guerrero was killed 190 years ago at Cuilápa, Oaxaca. Guerrero, a descendant of African slaves brought to Mexico,
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By KELIN DILLON Over 196.7 billion pesos in investment into Mexico’s energy sector are now in jeopardy, following Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial proposals to reform the nation’s electric industry, according to opponents of the bill. The proposed law would allow Mexico’s government-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to gain priority over private energy plants to upload their
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