Mexican State Legislatures Pass Energy Reform Bill

Still, the public only learned about a week ago the terms of the overhaul in which it was finally approved. It will allow private contracts for profit- and production-sharing as well as licenses under which companies will pay royalties and taxes to the Mexican government for the right to explore and drill for oil.

The left led opposition, arguing that the overhaul rolls back the landmark 1938 nationalization of Mexico's oil industry and effectively privatizes the energy industry. But leftists were badly outnumbered in Congress, where PRD legislators resorted to seizing the speakers' podium in Congress in a failed attempt to block debate.

Some analysts said the left hurt itself by walking out of inter-party negotiations on the reform weeks ago, and then seizing the podium — giving the PRI a pretext for fast-tracking the energy legislation.

"If the PRD had stayed in the talks, National Action would have been sidelined ... and the reform would have been much less daring than it wound up," said Ruben Aguilar, the former spokesman for ex-President Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party, which supported the reform.

National Action pushed for similar changes while it held the presidency in 2000-2012, but the party didn't have enough votes on its own and the PRI gave it little support.


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