López Obrador defends his energy policy: "We are not interested in private businesses"

President López Obrador visits the Pemex refinery in Dos Bocas (Tabasco) .Handout.

/ Reuters

With just one sentence, the President of Mexico has redefined this Thursday what the energy policy of his Government will consist of: "We are not interested in private business, we are interested in public business."

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has defended in his morning conference his unwavering commitment to the parastatals Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), as the two pivots on which his project will revolve in the coming years.

Along the way, the president has accused the Spanish company Iberdrola of having benefited from "very juicy contracts" in previous six-year terms, hours after the multinational refused to make new investments in the country due to obstacles from the Executive.

López Obrador has begun his defense of the rescue of Pemex and CFE with an attack on the “neoliberal period”: “The purpose was to leave the energy market to the private sector, both national and foreign, and this implied diminishing, undermining, destroying, ending Pemex and with the CFE ”.

The president considers that this is the purpose for which the 2014 energy reform was developed, which opened the sector to competition and from which the CFE has lost ground to generate around 56% of the country's electricity.

"This was certainly of interest to those who were profiting," said the president this Thursday.

“In the case of Iberdrola, a Spanish company awarded very juicy contracts by government officials.

But the settlement goes so far that the company is employed by those who were civil servants when those contracts were delivered to them.

The Secretary of Energy of the Government of Mexico became an official of Iberdrola, "he accused. López Obrador also took the opportunity to mention that former President Calderon was appointed a counselor of the multinational in 2016:" It is already the extreme of impudence. " On previous occasions, the president had assured that Spanish companies, such as Iberdrola or the construction company OHL, saw Mexico as a “land of conquest”.

In addition to public attacks, the Government has undertaken a series of regulatory changes that limit the participation of private initiative and that, according to experts, contradict the current legal framework.

The affected companies have presented appeals that have resulted in the suspension, definitive or temporary, of all the regulatory changes promoted by the Executive.

But, while the regulatory framework is being clarified, the president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, announced on Wednesday that they will not make new investments.

A large part of the 5,000 million dollars announced by the multinational a year and a half ago to "contribute to the energy and economic development of Mexico" is still in the air.

At the moment, only 550 million have been invested in two plants.

"If they say not to invest in strategic companies, we will not," said the executive in the presentation of results of the company, which is the largest private producer of electricity in Mexico.

The Government seems to turn a deaf ear to the company's complaints and supports its decision to "defend the interest of the people."

"I understand that with the new bailout policy for the Federal Electricity Commission and Pemex they are not satisfied, but we are not going to give in on this matter," the president concluded.