Mexican Congress votes to end Socialism and Pump Oil with Private Investment

Mexico Adopts Capitalism

• Mexico's Congress votes to amend the Constitution to allow private investment in the nation's socialist oil industry.
• Mexico looks to pump oil and create jobs and wealth.
• While back in the USA Socialist Democrats do everything possible to crush oil pumping and job creation.

The most dramatic overhaul of Mexico's oil industry in modern times came closer to fruition Thursday when Congress approved a proposal to end the state oil company's 75-year-old monopoly on the nation's oil and natural gas fields.

The vote marked President Enrique Pena Nieto's largest political triumph since he took office a year ago. After the 353-134 vote in the Chamber of Deputies, his supporters broke into sustained chants of "Mexico! Mexico!"

Lawmakers in favor — members of the Conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) and ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) — have said the reform was needed to revamp the lackluster state-run oil industry.

President Enrique Pena Nieto

The proposal still must be approved by a majority of Mexico's 31 state legislatures and that of the federal district before it is enshrined in the constitution. That is expected to happen early next year; Pena Nieto's political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, controls most of the state legislatures reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Once finally approved, the law would allow private capital, including foreign oil firms, to gain a foothold in the world's 10th-largest oil producer, an opportunity private companies have been denied since Mexico nationalized its oil industry in 1938.

In Twitter posts after the vote, Pena Nieto said it would "increase energy security of Mexico" and "boost productivity, economic growth and the generation of jobs."

"What we have approved will set the course for the country for the next 20 or 30 years," said Chamber of Deputies president Ricardo Anaya Cortes.

Nationalization of the oil industry has been a point of pride for Mexicans for decades, and Thursday's vote brought out high emotion, especially from nationalists who view the opening as an attack on a cornerstone of Mexican identity. Occasional cries of "traitor" interrupted the early-afternoon vote, which was taken not in the main chamber, but in an alternative hall because leftist opponents had piled up chairs and used chains to barricade entrances to the main chamber.

"The constitutional change was better and more pro-market than what the government initially proposed," said Nomura Securities' senior Latin America analyst Benito Berber.

 Experts say Pemex could become the fifth-largest oil company in the world.