Is There Any Clean Power in Mexico?

And we’re not talking just energy. Mexico is a very clear example of one of our favorite subjects: The politics of energy and the energy of politics (see earlier editions).

In the United States and Canada the battles are between oil/coal/fossil and the clean air and water group hydro/solar/wind. Mexico’s problems are compounded by the internecine drug war wherein it is truly difficult to tell who the good guys and bad guys are.

As if this isn’t bad enough, it becomes worse when you consider that Mexico is the third largest supplier of petroleum to the United States, second only to Canada and Venezuela. It currently supplies us with more than Saudi Arabia.

Last year, Rogelio Neri, former head of Mexico’s federal electricity commission blamed the inability of the nation’s oil industry to produce enough oil to meet rising demand that could cause Mexico to halt all oil exports – including the 11% of the United States total imports.

At the same time Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary and a former border state governor stated that the United States and Mexico are “winning the often brutal war” against the drug cartels that operate across the US/Mexico border.

“We are not only fighting this fight, we are winning it,” she told the Southwest Border Task Force gathered in El Paso, TX in early August 2009. She highlighted a string of drug and weapons seizures as proof that the $billion plus war is succeeding in spite of a violet “push-back” from gangs who have often appeared able to outgun and outspend the Mexican “federales.”

Thus the question of Mexico’s viability as a key supplier of oil to the U.S. is of great interest in terms of (1) the price of oil (2) the security of U.S. oil supplies and (3) the viability of Mexico as a self-governing state.

Respected Mexico observer George Baker is confident that Mexico will continue to be an exporter because Mexico’s viability and thus its “domestic tranquility – to the extent that it has much left given that it is fighting both drug-related and political violence – depends on it.”
Regardless – if Mexico stops exporting oil in four to six years, that is not a lot of time to find replacement for the 1,088 thousand barrels per day now being delivered.

It is clear that the OPEC group still has a threatening choke-hold on oil supplies that we still need. Recall that Venezuela is a member of OPEC – yes, a founding member.

If anything this situation calls for a real “all-court press” to develop the renewable power sources in North America – primarily HYDROPOWER! We can’t say it enough!