El Petroleo es Nuestro: A History of Oil in Mexico
Episodes
12 episodes
01 - The Oilfinders
Porfirio Diaz, Standard Oil, Weetman Pearson (El Aguila), Edward Doheny (La Huasteca), and gushers! Suggested reading: Jonathan C. Brown, "Oil and Revolution in Mexico." Link here: http://tinyurl.com/zvermpa
02 - Revolución
The oil companies withdraw from Mexican society as Revolution ravages the country. As Post-Revolutionary governments reassert control over the country, they go to battle with the oil companies over the validity of their holdings and soon find alli...
03 - The Expropriation
On March 18, 1938, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated the properties of the American, English, and Dutch oil companies operating in Mexico. Was this the ideological act of a political radical? Or a calculated piece of realpolitik that ...
04 - The Golden Age of Pemex
Antonio J. Bermudez assumes the Directorship of PEMEX and makes it the animal we have come to know and love. PEMEX truly becomes an oil company, making critical downstream investments and finally surpassing pre-Expropriation activity. But hints at...
05 - Poor Planning
In this episode, we struggle to make sense of PEMEX's adolescent period. Great measures - such as the formation of the Instituto Mexicano de Petroleo - are taken which will yield fantastic results a decade later. But disturbing patterns begin to e...
06 - Managing Abundance
We're back to gushers and glory here with the great oil finds of the 1970's: Reforma, Cantarell, and Ku-Maloob-Zaap. And we're talking about the closest thing PEMEX has to an American-style, larger-than-life oil personality: Jorge Diaz Serrano.Sug...
07 - The Lost Decade
Mexico limps through the 1980's following a collapse in oil prices and an effective default on its national debt. When the Harvard-educated, neoliberal Carlos Salinas takes office in 1988, he takes on the old structure of Mexico's statist economy,...
08 - Yeah, Another Crisis
The Peso Devaluation of 1994 and fallout from the Carlos Salinas administration opens the door to the election of the first non-PRI president of Mexico in 70 years. Vicente Fox enters office to great fanfare, yet leaves PEMEX largely untouched,...
09 - Slouching towards Reform
Cantarell peaks. Chicontepec comes up dry. And the Multiple Service Contracts fail to produce an increase in foreign investment or in the production of hydrocarbons. And then the PEMEX tower explodes. Things go from bad to worse in this episode, b...
10 - The Mexican Energy Reform
After regaining office in December 2012, the PRI party carries out the single biggest change to the Mexican Constitution in 70 years with the 2013 Mexican Energy Reform. In some ways, the 2013 Reform is simple to describe because it was so radical...
