Mexican Oil Industry Research Articles

Intelligent decision support system to increase the operational reliability of the hydrocarbon pipeline transport system of a Mexican oil industry

This research is carried out in the Mexican oil and gas industry. An Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) is proposed, through support modules for the human operator (fuzzy expert system and artificial neural network) that simulate, forecast and standardize operational decision criteria of a sequential pipeline pumping system, with problems of vandalism, mechanical deterioration in the face of a complex topographic profile, in order to minimize operational subjectivity and prevent contingencies. The research provides new control and monitoring alternatives that guarantee the operational reliability of a pumping station, minimizing the effects of risk by managing the knowledge of the experts involved in the problem, data mining and association of results, which allow to unify criteria decision. The originality of the work focuses on the ability to model, identify and adapt variables to current international parameters, considering previous works through a comprehensive perspective.

Accumulation and fluxes of potentially toxic elements in a large coastal lagoon (southern Gulf of Mexico) from 210Pb sediment chronologies

Three 210Pb-dated sediment cores were used to evaluate the contamination degree and flux ratios of potentially toxic elements (PTEs; As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn) in seagrass meadows from the northern margin of Términos Lagoon (TL), southern Gulf of Mexico. The sediments displayed minor Cd, Ni, V, and Zn enrichments but moderate to strong enrichment by As. Results from a chemometric analysis revealed that: 1) salinization and grain size, along with 2) the terrigenous inputs are the major factors influencing the PTEs accumulation. The historical trends of PTEs flux ratios nearly follow the large-scale land-use changes around TL, linked to the growth of the Mexican oil industry in the area since the 1970s. Our findings showed the critical role of seagrass meadows as PTEs sinks. This information is useful for decision-makers to develop restoration projects for a vulnerable site within the largest coastal lagoon ecosystem in Mexico.

Influence of Energy Factor on International Relations System of Latin America in the 21st century

Relation between oil trade and political regimes, climate change and problems of managing natural resources, mining technologies and fighting corruption and many others constitute the phenomenon of a multicomponent energy policy, the study of which is located at the intersection of natural and social sciences. Latin American region has large hydrocarbon reserves, huge hydropower potential, as well as significant opportunities to generate wind and solar energy. Historically, Latin America has occupied a small share of world energy production - about 5 %, where Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil have long been the only players of a global level. However, in the 21st century, factors such as the discovery of pre-salt oil deposits in Brazil, promising forecasts for the development of alternative gas sources in Argentina and the opening of Mexican oil industry for foreign companies after more than seventy years of the monopoly of Pemex, gave an additional impetus to the development of oil and gas industries of the region. The close relationship between energy industry and political context of a number of Latin American countries makes the region’s energy market less predictable, as changes cannot be predicted using standard industry analysis tools. This article analyzes the most significant episodes of political intervention - external or internal - to the energy industry in the 21st century, as well as the impact that events and decisions in this industry had on the regional policy. The authors analyze distinctive examples of the interconnectedness of these areas, from the “resource diplomacy” of Venezuela to the decisive actions of A.M. Lopez Obrador in Mexican energy in the first months of his presidency, and draw parallels between the chains of events in politics and energy. As the cases of Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela, cited in the article, show, the cost of error becomes extremely high when its consequences can destabilize both sectors due to their close interweaving.

Corporate social responsibility in the Mexican oil industry: Social impact assessment as a tool for local development

Mexico’s 2008 energy reform established that Petróleos Mexicanos and its subsidiary entities could contract with individuals or corporate entities for labor and the provision of required services to improve the implementation of its activities. The reform has allowed private companies to become more involved in the process of oil extraction and to implement Integrated Petroleum Exploitation Contracts. This participation of the private sector has brought with it the need to evaluate its activities’ social and environmental impact on the territory. One of these evaluations’ main objectives is to project Corporate Social Responsibility schemes. We can see from experience that it is possible for private oil companies’ participation in CSR schemes to contribute to local development, but the application of CSR actions does not in itself imply an impact on local development. This article aims to show the case of a pioneering experience in Mexico concerning the link between academics and the segment of oil companies that try to assess their activities’ social impact and implement Corporate Social Responsibility schemes under federal regulations. In order to achieve it, a work team belonging to Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana has developed a methodology that uses quantitative and qualitative data. The main results of this case study show us that it is necessary to develop appropriate approximation and assessment methodologies for implementing Corporate Social Responsibility actions in each territory in order to stimulate local development. Moreover, there are two essential conditions for actually achieving results for local development by investing in communities within the context of CSR actions in oil-production regions. The first of these conditions is a ‘territorialization’ of the proposals, and the second is the creation of different types of CSR actions. These last two conclusions are also challenges that Mexico’s fledgling private oil sector will have to solve in the very near future with the objective of improving its relations within the social and environmental context where it carries out its activities.

Environmental assessment of a combined heat and power plant configuration proposal with post-combustion CO2 capture for the Mexican oil and gas industry

Combined heat and power (CHP) plants retrofitted with post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) are discussed for the Mexican oil and gas industry using a life cycle assessment. This work investigates the energy efficiency improvements and potential environmental impacts generated by a 144-MW CHP plant coupled with PCC in a petrochemical complex. The project considers a change from the current steam-turbine generators (case 1), with an efficiency of 58%, to a gas turbine (case 2) coupled to a heat recovery steam generator to reach a combined efficiency of 87%. We also investigated the PCC of flue gas from the gas turbine in case 2 by chemical absorption using Aspen HYSYS (case 3). The results showed that case 2 leads to a reduction in all evaluated categories of environmental impact when compared to the base case (case 1). The average global warming potential (GWP) is 626 kgCO2eq/MWh for case 1 and 460 kgCO2e/MWh for case 2. In case 3, the GWP of 42 kg CO2e/MWh was estimated, 1075 t/day of CO2 can be captured with a recovery efficiency of approximately 95%, and an energy return of 85% can be obtained. This study provides a new approach for obtaining maximum energy flux with low-carbon emissions, constituting “clean energy” production.

Canadian Capital and the Denationalization of the Mexican Energy Sector: A Geojuridical Approach

The recent reform of Mexico’s energy sector, underway since 2013, is the culmination of several decades of liberalization policies that aimed, in large part, to denationalize Mexico’s petroleum industry and open the sector to investment from private foreign firms. In reversing the nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry in 1938, this reform has significant implications for the triumph of neoliberal globalization in the Global South, even in a period of rising protectionism in the Global North. Both the United States and Canada played a significant role in promoting the reform of Mexico’s energy sector and in structuring the legislative changes that reopened Mexico’s hydrocarbon resources to foreign control. Over the past two years, Canadian firms have benefited significantly from new pipeline and oil and gas contracts in Mexico. Taking a legal-geographical approach, this paper examines Canadian involvement in the restructuring of Mexico’s oil and gas sector, both spatially (through proximity, interests, and influence in the North American energy market) and legally. The legal component operates through a form of juridical pluralism, in which the institutions of contemporary economic globalization, including the Canadian state, participate in legislative and regulatory changes in the Mexican oil industry.

Вызовы и перспективы развития нефтяной отрасли Мексики на современном этапе

Вызовы и перспективы развития нефтяной отрасли Мексики на современном этапе

Sectoral Offsets in the Mexican Oil and Gas Industry: Developing a Credible Baseline via Econometric Methods

Sectoral greenhouse gas offsets can provide the same incentives for emissions reductions as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program, with a focus on rewards rather than costs. This paper develops a pilot analysis of such offsets using relatively transparent quantitative methods to estimate a business-as-usual (BAU) emissions path for the gas and basic petrochemical subsidiary of Mexico’s national oil company, Pemex. This BAU path, in turn, may be used as a basis for monetizing emissions reductions via bilateral or international offset transactions, with potentially low transaction costs. Overall, the analysis finds that a 10 percent emissions reduction below baseline would yield about US$40 million in additional revenue over a 13-year period for this Pemex subsidiary at a price of US$10 per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). Larger emissions reductions, higher offset prices, or expansion to other, larger company units could generate correspondingly higher revenues.

Crude residues: The workings of failing oil infrastructure in Poza Rica, Veracruz, Mexico

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in and around Poza Rica—an emblematic oil town that flourished in the aftermath of the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry in 1938—this article looks at how the material and social visibility and invisibility of failing infrastructure is constantly being renegotiated and achieved by those living amid it. Rather than a given physical quality, I demonstrate how (in)visibility is the outcome of everyday corporate practices, toxic mundane encounters, air technologies, as well as affective attachments that illuminate or obscure the harmful presence of oil and its infrastructure in this industrial town. I suggest that the ways in which different contours of perceptions and imperceptions are negotiated are central to understanding how people living in and on oil endure risk, precariousness, and suffering.

Environmental quality assessment of a tropical wetland contaminated by weathered hydrocarbon wastes

In this work, was assessed the environmental quality of Santa Alejandrina wetland impacted by the Mexican oil industry. The assessment was achieved by conducting an analysis of variance between the content of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and that of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), including the biological indexes for both flora and fauna. Significantly higher values (p <0.05) of richness and biodiversity were found in the control zone compared to contaminated zones. It was observed that the control zone had low concentrations of both TPH and PAH, which allows for the support of a greater number of species than in the rest of the contaminated zones. We conclude that biological indexes and concentrations of TPH and PAH are useful to determine the environmental degradation of a wetland associated to soil contaminated by weathered hydrocarbon wastes. We considered that the approach used in this study may be applied to other wetlands. [Received: March 27, 2014; Accepted: March 27, 2014].

Human and ecotoxicological impacts assessment from the Mexican oil industry in the Coatzacoalcos region, as revealed by the USEtox model.

Human and ecotoxicological impacts were analyzed in the lower basin of the Coatzacoalcos River (Veracruz, State in Mexico). High pollution levels of contaminants from the oil industry have been reported in natural streams and the Coatzacoalcos River and in their sediments. USEtox model was employed to evaluate environmental fate, exposure, and effect of nine organic compounds (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and one of which was in the group of polychlorinated biphenyls), a heavy metal (lead), and the effect of the industrial wastewater emitted into the river, on the Coatzacoalcos region. Most of these compounds are highly toxic; they bioaccumulate in human and animal tissue, mainly in the fatty tissues and can damage different organs and systemic targets such as the liver, kidney, hormonal system, nervous system, etc., of both humans and wildlife. The model estimates that 96% (3,247 kg/day) of organic compounds is transferred from the water into air, whereas only 4% (151 kg/day) remains in the water. In addition, it predicts that humans are mainly exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) congeners (28 and 153) by eating contaminated fish, due to PCBs accumulating in the fish fat tissue. The number of cases of cancer and noncancer (1 in 862 habitants per additional kilogram) is expected to have an increment due to the higher PCBs exposure of human population. Genetic damages in fishes, earthworms, and toads have been observed and related to higher exposure to organic compounds. The relationship between the field reported data and those one predicted by the USEtox model have been confirmed empirically by using the nonparametric correlation analysis (Spearman's rho). Based on the USEtox model, the environmental stress in the Coatzacoalcos industrial zone is between 2 and 6 orders of magnitude over geometric mean of acute aquatic EC₅₀s. We think that USEtox model can be used to expand the number of substances that have the current water quality guidelines to improve the water management in Mexico.

HAZOP – Local approach in the Mexican oil & gas industry

HAZOP (Hazard and Operability) studies began about 40 years ago, when the Process Industry and complexity of its operations start to massively grow in different parts of the world. HAZOP has been successfully applied in Process Systems hazard identification by operators, design engineers and consulting firms. Nevertheless, after a few decades since its first applications, HAZOP studies are not truly standard in worldwide industrial practice. It is common to find differences in its execution and results format. The aim of this paper is to show that in the Mexican case at National level in the oil and gas industry, there exist an explicit acceptance risk criteria, thus impacting the risk scenarios prioritizing process. Although HAZOP studies in the Mexican oil & gas industry, based on PEMEX corporate standard has precise acceptance criteria, it is not a significant difference in HAZOP applied elsewhere, but has the advantage of being fully transparent in terms of what a local industry is willing to accept as the level of risk acceptance criteria, also helps to gain an understanding of the degree of HAZOP applications in the Mexican oil & gas sector. Contrary to this in HAZOP ISO standard, risk acceptance criteria is not specified and it only mentions that HAZOP can consider scenarios ranking. The paper concludes indicating major implications of risk ranking in HAZOP, whether before or after safeguards identification.

Dangerous trade: histories of industrial hazard across a globalizing world

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: From Dangerous Trades to Trade in Dangers: Toward an Industrial Hazard History of the Present / Christopher Sellers and Joseph Melling Part I: The Late Nineteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century Creating Industrial Hazards in the Developing World 1. Rubber Plantation Workers, Work Hazards, and Health in Colonial Malaya, 1900-1940 / Amarjit Kaur 2. Work, Home, and Natural Environments: Health and Safety in the Mexican Oil Industry, 1900-1938 / Myrna Santiago Knowing and Controlling in the Developed World 3. Global Markets and Local Conflicts in Mercury Mining: Industrial Restructuring and Workplace Hazards at the Almaden Mines in the Early Twentieth Century / Alfredo Menendez-Navarro 4. Trade, Spores, and the Culture of Disease: Attempts to Regulate Anthrax in Britain and Its International Trade, 1875-1930 / Tim Carter and Joseph Melling 5. Rayon, Carbon Disulfide, and the Emergence of the Multinational Corporation in Occupational Disease / Paul D. Blanc Part II: The Middle to the Late Twentieth Century New Transfers of Production 6. Shipping the Next Prize: The Trade in Liquefied Natural Gas from Nigeria to Mexico / Anna Zalik 7. New Hazards and Old Disease: Lead Contamination and the Uruguayan Battery Industry / Daniel E. Renfrew New Knowledge and Coalitions 8. Objective Collectives? Transnationalism and Invisible Colleges in Occupational and Environmental Health from Collis to Selikoff / Joseph Melling and Christopher Sellers 9. Bread and Poison: The Story of Labor Environmentalism in Italy, 1968-1998 / Stefania Barca 10. A New Environmental Turn? How the Environment Came to the Rescue of Occupational Health: Asbestos in France c. 1970-1995 / Emmanuel Henry New Arenas of Contest 11. A Tale of Two Lawsuits: Making Policy-Relevant Environmental Health Knowledge in Italian and U.S. Chemical Regions / Barbara Allen 12. Pesticide Regulation, Citizen Action, and Toxic Trade: The Role of the Nation-State in the Transnational History of DBCP / Susanna Rankin Bohme 13. Turning the Tide: The Struggle for Compensation for Asbestos-Related Diseases and the Banning of Asbestos / Barry Castleman and Geoffrey Tweedale Conclusion / Joseph Melling and Christopher Sellers, with Barry Castleman Contributors Index

Legal framework for the offshore operations of the Mexican Oil Industry from a systemic environmental perspective

In general, the assessment of the environmental impact of fossil oil exploration and exploitation is related to pollution, particularly to oil spills. However, this is a limited view of the implications of the problem because there are other deleterious effects that are assumed to be assimilated by the resilient capacity of the marine environment. However, some criteria to evaluate and cope with these additional effects have emerged and should be incorporated into the legislation of such activities. This rationale is applied to oil exploration and exploitation in the southwest of the Gulf of Mexico. The aim is to contribute to the development of a regional framework for the sustainable management of marine water natural resources. An analysis of 10 criteria and 38 attributes of sustainability and impacts caused by this activity were applied here to 26 Mexican legislative instruments. Cluster and multivariate analyses were performed to map the interrelations among legal instruments. The results show a failure of 51–92% to control marine impacts from marine oil drilling and exploitation. Attributes that should be reinforced in the already existing Mexican legal framework include seismic surveys, explosion control, oil pipe networks, oil rig deployment, dredging, channel opening, and ballast water discharge. Moreover, two of these key legal Instruments regulating oil offshore environmental impacts need to be improved: Norm 149-SEMARNAT-2006 and the Environmental Impact Assessment regional guidelines.

Mexican Oil Industry: Shifting to Difficult Oil

For many decades Mexico has been considered as one of the most important oil nations in the world. However, in the last few years, Mexico has stepped into an important transition under the light of declining oil fields and new challenging oil projects. The aim of this paper is to show a new perspective of the oil resources that have been exploited throughout the Mexican territory, as well as the remaining resources yet to be exploited. We have developed a resources/production-costs chart that illustrates the historical and future development of the Mexican oil industry, showing the shift that the industry will face in the coming years. The concept for this chart was taken from a model already in use by some of the most prestige energy agencies in the world.

An Operationalization of the Strategic-Relational Approach: The Contested Privatization of the Mexican Oil Sector (1982–2006)

This article is based on the strategic-relational approach developed by Bob Jessop and investigates the contested privatization of the Mexican oil industry. Privatization has been rampant all over Latin America throughout the 1980s and 1990s. There are, however, some important exceptions from this general trend towards privatization which go widely unnoticed within the academic debate. The Mexican oil sector is one such exception as steps towards its privatization have been undertaken since the 1980s but until today ownership-rights for the enterprise remain with the Mexican state. The strategic-relational approach assumes that despite the pressure exercised by a post-Fordist accumulation regime towards privatization, the contingent interaction of actor strategies and institutions allows for alternative historical paths and may lead to the collapse of privatization processes. In order to conduct a detailed case study, an operationalization of the strategic-relational approach is necessary. Following this path, virgin soil is entered as date only a few attempts have been made to operationalize strategic-relational categories. The case study of the privatization conflict over the Mexican oil industry reveals that in this specific case decisive resistance against privatization stems from the Ministry of Finance, which is normally considered the most important institutional basis of neoliberalism in Mexico. Este artículo se basa en el enfoque relacional estratégico desarrollado por Bob Jessop, e investiga la controvertida privatización de la industria petrolera mexicana. Durante los años 80 y 90, la privatización ha sido dominante en toda Latinoamérica. Sin embargo, hay algunas excepciones importantes de esta tendencia general hacia la privatización, que han pasado desapercibidas en el debate académico. El sector petrolero mexicano hace parte de tal excepción, en la medida que los pasos hacia la privatización se iniciaron en los años 80, pero los derechos de propiedad de la empresa son del estado mexicano. El enfoque estratégico relacional asume que, a pesar de la presión ejercida por un régimen de acumulación hacia la privatización posterior a Ford, la interacción contingente entre las estrategias del actor y las instituciones permiten vías históricas alternas y pueden conducir al colapso de los procesos de privatización. Con el fin de llevar a cabo un estudio detallado del caso, es necesario adoptar un enfoque operacional de las relaciones estratégicas. Continuando con esta idea, hasta la fecha, muy poco se ha hecho para establecer categorías relacionales estratégicas de operación, ejemplo, las tierras vírgenes. El estudio del caso del conflicto de la privatización de la industria petrolera mexicana, revela que en este caso específico, la resistencia a la privatización del petróleo se origina en el Ministerio de Hacienda, considerado como la base institucional más importante del neoliberalismo en México. 本文是以鲍勃·杰索普所发展的战略-关系路径为基础，考察有争议的墨西哥石油工业私有化。在整个20世纪80年代和90年代，私有化在全拉美盛行。然而，在这一私有化的大趋势中，也存在一些重要的例外，它们在学术辩论中未受关注。墨西哥石油部门就是这样一个例外，因墨西哥石油部门的私有化20世纪80年代即开始着手，但至今公司的所有权仍掌握在国家手中。 战略-关系路径假定，尽管后福特主义的资本积累机制对私有化施加了压力，但行为体战略与机构之间有条件的互动提供了可供选择的历史路径，并可能导致私有化进程的瓦解。为了进行详细的案例研究，对战略-关系路径进行操作化是必要的。沿着这条路径，把未开垦的土地纳入了进来，因迄今为止只进行了个别尝试把战略-关系分类可操作化。 对墨西哥石油工业的私有化冲突案例研究表明，在这一特定例子中，反对私有化的决定性阻力来自通常被认为是墨西哥新自由主义最重要制度基础的财政部。

The Role of Mexico in the First Oil Shortage: 1918-1922, an International Perspective

In 1921 Mexico produced a quarter of world's petroleum, making the country the second largest producer in the world, but by 1930 it only accounted for 3 per cent of world's production. To date the discussion has mostly relied on events taking place in Mexico for explaining the decline of the industry. Very little attention has been placed to developments in petroleum industry elsewhere, except Venezuela. Practically no attention has been paid to the reasons for the rise of oil output in Mexico. This neglects the massive changes taking place in the petroleum industry worldwide during the Great War years and its aftermath, and overall ignores the shortage of oil that occurred in the world's markets between 1918-1921. These are crucial events in order to understand the early rise of the Mexican oil industry and set the basis for a better understanding of the subsequent sudden decline.

Weetman Pearson in Mexico and the Emergence of a British Oil Major, 1901–1919

British overseas investment was a powerful force behind rapid global integration before World War I. Close to half of the total was in the form of foreign direct investment. Weetman Pearson was among the most successful of Britain's overseas-based entrepreneurs of the period. By 1919, the Pearson group of companies had become one of Britain's most valuable industrial enterprises, having diversified from international contracting into the Mexican oil industry. The Pearson group highlights the technical competence of British entrepreneurs in managing large, complex infrastructure projects, capable of navigating their way through various political systems, and adept at turning to whichever organizational form best suited their business interests. These characteristics were far removed from the now outdated stereotype of the incompetent late Victorian entrepreneur.

The new foreign participation rules in each sector of the Mexican oil and gas industry: Are the modifications enough for foreign capitals?

The new foreign participation rules in each sector of the Mexican oil and gas industry: Are the modifications enough for foreign capitals?

Women of the Mexican Oil Fields: Class, Nationality, Economy, Culture, 1900–1938

The Mexican oil industry during the period of foreign ownership, 1900–1938, has inspired scholarship covering a myriad of actors, but not women. This article proposes to fill in that gap, documenting the experiences of foreign and Mexican women in the cradle of the industry, northern Veracruz and Tampico, Tamaulipas. This article argues that women were not only present in the oil fields, but that they were also indispensable for the economic success of the oil enterprise as a whole. Nevertheless, the experiences of women were quite diverse, depending on such factors as class and nationality. For Mexican women in particular, life in oil country meant revolutionary changes, even if capitalist structures and patriarchal culture remained intact.