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 The bill, backed by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) and the opposition conservative National Action Party (PAN),
would mark the biggest strategic shift since the world's no. 10 oil
producer nationalized the sector 75 years ago.
It aims to let private firms partner with ailing state oil firm
Pemex via profit-sharing, risk-sharing and service contracts as well
as licenses.
Senate committees overseeing the bill gave it general approval on
Monday before beginning a protracted debate on reservations raised
by leftist lawmakers trying to derail it.
As debates moved into Tuesday morning, the three committees
dominated by the PRI and the PAN took advantage of a procedural
technicality and agreed to move the bill to the floor of the Senate
to vote on remaining reservations there.
The move was intended to counter stalling tactics of leftist
opponents of the reform led by the Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD), which is fighting hard to stop the bill passing
this year as the government wants.
The Senate will reconvene later on Tuesday.
The revised draft of the bill was a positive surprise for many in
the oil industry, and the government hopes it will help stem a
decade-long slide in crude oil output.
The energy reform is seen helping drive economic growth in Mexico,
which would underpin the peso. The currency rallied on Monday to a
seven-week high.
Once the Senate has passed the bill, it must head to the lower house
of Congress to be voted on.
CORNERSTONE
The reform is a cornerstone of an economic program that President
Enrique Pena Nieto hopes will boost long-lagging growth in Latin
America's No. 2 economy. It would allow private investors to drill for the country's oil, and
although it stops short of full-blown concessions, it goes much
further than many analysts had expected.
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Lawmakers say companies will not have rights to book oil reserves on
their balance sheets but will be able to report projected benefits
from agreed contracts for accounting purposes, which lawyers say is
tantamount to the same thing.
Other specialists say the proposal is vague on this point.
In a section setting out how risk-sharing contracts work
internationally, the draft bill explains that production-sharing
contracts let companies book crude reserves for accounting ends.
But "the hydrocarbons beneath the surface are and will always be the
property of the nation; in consequence, no participant in the oil
industry will be able report the reserves of these products as
assets," it states.
The bill is a big step forward from the service contracts now on
offer, in which companies are paid a fee and can recover costs. It
also goes well beyond the original proposal made by Pena Nieto in
August, which was limited to profit-sharing contracts.
(Reporting by Dave Graham, Adriana Barrera, Michael O'Boyle, David
Alire Garcia, Ana Isabel Martinez and Alexandra Alper; editing by
John Stonestreet)
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