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Mexico links from IAEA
* National Institute of Nuclear Research
* Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares
* Comisión Federal de Electricidad
* Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean
February 17, 2007
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This is front page story in today's paper. An al-Qaida faction this week urged militants to attack U.S. oil suppliers in Mexico, Canada and Venezuela. The threat prompted the Mexican government to send troops to bolster security at pipelines and refineries on Friday. But this article stresses that Pemex has other problems. Of the 34 oil companies on the Fortune 500 list of companies in 2006, Pemex was the only one that lost money. The company's main Cantarell oil field in southern Mexico is drying up. There is not enough money to tap deeper reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, and much of the company's machinery is out of date. Pemex can't even refine enough gasoline to meet its national demand, forcing Mexico to send its oil to foreign refineries, then re-import the finished fuel. In 2005, Mexico imported 333,700 barrels per day of refined petroleum products, about half of it in gasoline. Pemex produces 27 barrels of oil daily per employee, or about $1,530 at current prices, compared with 71 barrels in Petroleos de Venezuela, another state-owned company, according to Petroleum Intelligence Weekly. Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state oil firm, produces 182 barrels per employee. The large workforce has saddled the company with $34 billion in pension liabilities, in addition to $46 billion in other debts. The company's high debt load and tax burden - Pemex pays 62 percent of its revenues in taxes - means it could have trouble getting financing to explore for more oil deposits.
* [2006-03-10] Mexico's Only Nuclear Plant Restarts * [2006-03-09] Mexico's Only Nuclear Plant Shuts Reactor * The difference here is that corruption is so endemic, so overwhelming that it holds the country back and destroys initiative... A 2003 national survey estimated that Mexicans spend $1.6-billion on bribes a year -- involving an estimated 100-million corrupt transactions -- just to obtain public services... Fox changed things, temporarily. He created the hope, even among the jaded, that the nation was finally going to capitalize on its low labor costs, its location next to the world's wealthiest consumers, its oil riches and its natural beauty. Mexico would ride high into the 21t century, free at last to take its place as a leader among Western nations. These lofty expectations have made each new scandal all the more disillusioning to many Mexicans... The governor of Morelos made a grand public gesture on Monday when he suspended the entire state police criminal investigation force, vowing to overhaul it and create a new department "more in line with the needs of society". By Thursday, 232 of the 553 suspended officers were back on duty. A police spokesman explained there was no evidence to warrant taking away their badges.
... Studies indicate that only 5% of any kind of crime in Mexico results in a person being convicted and sent to jail. This reinforces the widely held view that the rule of law has broken down -- that many people are above it... Chiapas has taken a novel approach to corruption in one agency: It has put up automatic kiosks to dispense driver's licenses, replacing the government bureaucrat. The hope is to ensure that these fees wind up paying for roads and other badly needed public services, instead of being stuffed into a bureaucrat's pocket... To try to change the widespread tolerance of the culture of corruption, and to encourage public outrage, the federal government has been showing short films before movies on 1,000 cinema screens across the cuntry. In one of them, a little boy watches his father slip cash to a police officer after running a stoplight... [B]y showing what is going on through the innocent eyes of a child, the campaign is offering a new message -- that corruption will never end if each generation is taught that it is acceptable.
[Source: Mary Jordan (Washington Post foreign correspondent), "The Bribes That Bind Mexico -- and Hold It Back", The Washington Post, April 18, 2004, p. B2]
Sergio Solache, Arizona Republic
Guardian
Guardian