Watching stock markets and oil prices today in the face of threatened US military strikes against Syria is reason enough for Mexico to keep control of its oil: to keep it out of the hands of an unstable world. Certainly a much more impressive voice than mine has recently said the same thing. In La Jornada today, Juan Antonio Zuñiga reports on Joseph Stiglitz's reasoning on why Mexico ought to safeguard its oil. Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and is on the faculty of Columbia University where he is a University Professor and co-chair of the University's Committee on Global Thought. He is considered one of the top economists in the world and is a frequent critic of globalization as it exists today and of free-market fundamentalism. He understands that free markets don't do much for ordinary people. He sees things more subtly. I have put in the same link to the Wikipedia article several times in the hope that you will follow it and learn about this man.
I have translated parts of Zuñiga's article in La Jornada, somewhat roughly (it's late).
Zuñiga writes that "Mexico ought to safeguard ownership of its petroleum to benefit its population. It ought to take special care in the details of secondary laws because 'the devil is in the details, which those secondary reforms are.".... :
"Furthermore, he [Stiglitz] recommended that the next Hacendaria reform program focus, before anything else, on taxing pollution, and also monopolies and oligopolies since those are an important source of resources. He indicated that the reforms which are promoted in Mexico ought to target the eradication of monopolies and oligopolies, reduce the enormous inequality [which exists in the country] and in general benefit the whole population, not only a few.
"....[H]e suggested the adoption of six precepts which should be included in petroleum reform. The first is transparency in all stages of public procurement....
"He described competency as the second precept, [which should be gained] by means of competitive bidding and good design. [There should be] good contracts, with strong incentives, but which [nonetheless] commit (the signatories) to assume obligations like care of the environment; that assume commitments so that the benefits of oil and gas will be shared....
"Stiglitz maintained that Mexico needs technologies to exploit its resources. He said 'there is no reason that Petrobras [the Brazilian state-owned petroleum company] should have them and not Mexico.' He pointed out that 'well-implemented reforms can be the spur for moving ahead.'
....
"In a country where the high-income ten percent of the population has an income twenty six times greater than those at a lower level, fiscal reform can play an important role in diminishing this inequality...
"'The reform agenda is impressive. Mexico has taken its future into its own hands and it is very good to be here, in Mexico at this moment.' But he also warned that the renewal of economic activity in the US is not exactly as has been announced. Indeed, he said, "the deception of the North American recovery has provoked a leakage of foreign currencies from emerging countries. We [the United States] are not in an important recovery."
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It just seems to me that if Mexico were (miraculously) to reform its petroleum industry and keep it Mexican, it would give it a tremendous leg up as the world around it has increasing difficulties.