{"id":2920,"date":"2020-10-29T21:51:19","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T03:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/?p=2920"},"modified":"2020-10-29T21:51:19","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T03:51:19","slug":"will-a-fracking-boom-ever-happen-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/will-a-fracking-boom-ever-happen-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Will A Fracking Boom Ever Happen In Mexico?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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OIL PRICE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexico is sitting on top of the sixth biggest collective shale reserve in the entire world. At an estimated total of 545 trillion cubic feet, they\u2019re just a hair behind the United States\u2019 estimated 665 trillion cubic feet, which changed the global energy industry and handed the United States energy security on a silver platter thanks to the shale revolution. So why hasn\u2019t Mexico had its own shale revolution? Just across the U.S. border, Mexico is sitting on a veritable goldmine known as the Burgos Basin.\u201d The Burgos Basin shale gas field, which spans the arid shrublands of Northern Tamaulipas, Mexico, is a potential bonanza as big or bigger than the record-setting Eagle Ford shale play across the Rio Grande in South Texas,\u201d The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) reported this week. There are already thousands of active conventional gas wells in the area, but fracking has never exploded in the way that many speculators anticipated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not that Mexico has never dabbled in fracking. The state-owned oil and gas company Petroleos Mexicanos (known as Pemex) has used hydraulic fracturing methods for oil and gas extraction since the 1980s. Pemex even announced successful fracking trails in the Burgos Basin in 2013. \u201cBut seven years later, shale gas wells remain at the exploratory stage,\u201d NACLA reports. While Pemex has drilled around 20 exploratory shale gas test wells in the Burgos Basin, the development of the sector seems to have stalled out completely, with zero private firms currently drilling for shale gas in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the Burgos Basin hasn\u2019t been fully (or really even partially) exploited, no one is sure exactly just how big and how valuable its reserves are. But there is consensus that the potential payoff is massive. Until now, however, private investors have been wary of getting involved in the shale play for a variety of reasons. \u201cFor now, challenges of infrastructure, investment, and regulation are leaving Mexico\u2019s potentially massive shale deposits mostly untapped,\u201d reports NACLA. \u201cThe market is dead right now. Fracking isn\u2019t going forward,\u201d expert Hatch Kuri from the National Autonomous University of Mexico was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As usual, there are politics involved. Mexico\u2019s current president Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador publically swore that he would ban fracking nationwide soon after his election in 2018. As of right now, however, there still isn\u2019t a law on the books. And in light of state-owned oil company Pemex\u2019s continually dismal performance and a particularly tough year economically, L\u00f3pez Obrador seems to be wavering on his anti-fracking stance. Since the beginning of the pandemic, he has sent conflicting messages, quietly ramping up national oil production while simultaneously repeating his interest in repealing 2014\u2019s energy reforms which welcomed foreign investors into the Mexican energy sector. If fracking is ever going to get off the ground in Mexico, these reforms would play an essential role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has led to a fracking stand-off in Mexico, where pro-fracking advocates are pushing hard for the government to open its arms to investment dollars to boost the domestic economy, and local constituents and environmental advocates are just as vocal about their desire for L\u00f3pez Obrador to make good on his promise to ban fracking outright. Local activists have been getting louder and more exacting in their demands for environmental and community protections against the potential ramping up of domestic fracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, while it may seem like a no brainer to copy the United States\u2019 playbook to recreate the shale revolution south of the border, it\u2019s not so simple. For one thing, communities in Mexico have a lot more control over their mineral rights than communities in Texas, where the U.S. shale boom was born. This means that drilling in Mexico is actually a whole lot more difficult and a lot more expensive. \u201c\u201cIt’s quite a bit more expensive to drill in Mexico compared to what they could pipe in from Texas,\u201d said Matthew Fry, a geographer at the University of North Texas. \u201cWhat happened with shale and the massive boom in the U.S. was really unique, and we haven\u2019t seen it duplicated anywhere else.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That being said, there are still a whole lot of people who want to give it a try. And right now, when Mexico is particularly cash-strapped thanks to the pandemic, they may just get their chance – but the local anti-fracking movement won\u2019t make it easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haley Zaremba. (2020). Will A Fracking Boom Ever Happen In Mexico? USA. Oil Price. <\/em>Recuperado de <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Energy-General\/Will-A-Fracking-Boom-Ever-Happen-In-Mexico.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OIL PRICE Mexico is sitting on top of the sixth biggest collective shale reserve in the entire world. At an estimated total of 545 trillion cubic feet, they\u2019re just a hair behind the United States\u2019 estimated 665 trillion cubic feet, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2920"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2922,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions\/2922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}