Andrés Manuel López Obrador has taken advantage of the celebration of International Workers' Day this Sunday to vindicate his plan for energy sovereignty and once again stage his break with past administrations.
The President of Mexico went to the Dos Bocas Refinery, in the State of Tabasco, one of the great public works of his Government, and before thousands of people employed in the construction of the facilities, he insisted on an announcement that he had already outlined occasionally.
That is, next year the country will bury the traditional scheme of selling crude oil and importing gasoline.
“It is as if we were selling oranges and buying orange juice,” he has stated.
The central act of this May Day has made it clear that the president continues to make energy policy a central factor not only in his mandate, but also in his campaign arguments.
With just over a month to go before the elections that will renew the governors of six states -Tamaulipas, Durango, Quintana Roo, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Aguascalientes-, López Obrador has reviewed his project, highlighting the differences with the model promoted by the PRI and the PAN, formations that have once again described as “neoliberal”.
“They haven't built refineries for 40 years because they decided to sell crude oil and buy gasoline.
Now it's different”, he emphasized.
"Now we are going to process all our raw material, next year we are going to stop buying gasoline abroad, we are going to be self-sufficient."
The horizon of self-sufficiency goes through the rescue of a kind of oil dream of Mexico and the strengthening of the state company Pemex.
Just this week the first shipments arrived with the fuel produced at the Deer Park refinery, near Houston (Texas), the latest acquisition by the Government in the neighboring country.
Beyond the viability of the plan in those terms, the paradigm is very similar to the one defended by López Obrador with the production of electrical energy, through the strengthening of the state Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
Although the electricity reform was finally frustrated by Congress, since the ruling party Morena did not have enough numbers to undertake a change in the Constitution, the Supreme Court recently endorsed the new electricity law after a year of blockade, which opens the door to your application.
Added to these initiatives is the protection of lithium.
In April, Parliament approved the nationalization of this resource in record time.
López Obrador has also spoken openly during his speech in Dos Bocas, accompanied by members of his cabinet, about the electoral panorama.
The president has issued a warning to the opposition, which has an immediate reading and another in the medium term.
“What I can tell you is that we are going to continue to win games by beating,” the president said, using a simile that he has borrowed from baseball, his favorite sport.
"We have five starters, women and men, and about ten closers, women and men, and they all shoot more than a hundred miles," said the president.
In recent days, speculation has multiplied about the candidates for succession.
In addition to the head of the Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, or the head of the Morena senators, Ricardo Monreal, the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, has joined the pools. , veteran leader and former governor of Tabasco (the president's home state), who was present today at the event.
López Obrador insists that he does not have a favorite and that he will respect the result of the internal vote, which will be decided through a poll of members.
However, the race has been determining the political news for months now with more or less buried battles.
The opposition does not yet have a clear name to run in 2024, but in the meantime all the lights are now focused on the state elections on June 5.
A race in which the so-called Fourth Transformation aspires to expand its territorial power.
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