Mexico's Energy Reform Will Remain the Law of the Land

Left-wing Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appears to have a reasonable chance of winning Mexico's 2018 presidential election. His National Regeneration Movement, aka Morena, is part of a crowded field along with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the National Action Party (PAN) in the race, where only a plurality of the vote is required to win. Lopez Obrador has been a vocal critic of Mexico's landmark 2013 energy reforms, which he has promised to overturn. Although his rhetoric has varied since the reforms were implemented, his statements suggest he would like to reverse Mexico's opening to private energy investment. Morena has also previously floated the idea of giving national oil company Petroleos Mexicanos the ability to assign fields without auctions and awarding Pemex a minimum stake in each new project....