As Latin American countries reassess their energy policies in light of lower oil prices, there is an opportunity to apply lessons learned from the US experience to enact regulations that mitigate environmental risks, strengthen public support, and attract investment.
As global oil prices collapsed over the last two years, regional governments have started to lose their leverage in the energy industry. To attract international investors, they must offer increasingly favorable terms, which means ceding more of their own control.
Lower prices may also have an upside for the region’s biggest exporters, as high-cost producers in competing Canada take a hit.
Will President Enrique Peña Nieto deliver on his promises to lower power prices and reduce subsidies?
Across Latin America, the sustained decline in global oil prices has had a profound impact on economic growth, political stability and the viability of resource nationalism – when governments assert more control over the nation’s natural resources.
Will Pemex’s most recent oil discoveries be enough to reverse the country’s output declines?
Mexico’s 2013 energy reform has led to pledges of almost $200 billion of private investment and renewable power auctions garnering bids to provide electricity at record-low prices. The Mexican government should continue to build on the successes of the reform, César Hernández, former Mexican undersecretary for electricity, and Jorge Castilla, managing director for Mexico at Accenture, said at an event hosted by the Inter-American Dialogue, the Embassy of Mexico, and the Energy Policy Research Foundation.
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New leaders in Mexico and Brazil may mean big changes to their respective energy sectors. Lisa Viscidi tells Richard Miles of CSIS that a Mexican delay on offshore bidding could have a major impact, but that Brazil is likely to maintain the status quo. Venezuela could take years to recover production once it emerges from its current crisis, given the massive investment required to reverse declining oil output.
Just as Pemex bonds suffered a downgrading to junk status by Fitch, Lisa Viscidi, director of the Energy Program, sat down with Nathaniel Parish Flannery of Forbes to discuss the state of Mexico’s energy sector, including oil and gas, regulators, and renewables, seven months into the AMLO administration.
Firms across Latin America are complaining about the difficulties of recruiting workers with the technical skills their businesses demand. Lack of adequate skills is becoming a bottleneck for growth in technologically complex industries, harming government efforts to increase investment in strategic sectors of the economy. In Mexico, the energy reform creates opportunities to generate new jobs and educate and train workers in specialized skillsets, but the country will also face challenges in meeting additional demand for skilled labor.
Lisa Viscidi, director of the Energy Program, gave a presentation to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Mexican energy policy under AMLO and its implications for US-Mexico energy trade.
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Program Director Lisa Viscidi sits down with Ben Cahill of CSIS to discuss recent developments in Mexico’s energy sector.
The energy markets of the United States and Mexico are deeply integrated, to the benefit of both countries and their economies. The new US administration has a clear interest in preserving and expanding this fruitful relationship while advancing its ambitious clean energy and climate goals, both at home and abroad. On March 11, the Inter-American Dialogue held a private roundtable on US-Mexico energy cooperation.
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Lisa Viscidi, la directora del programa de Energía, Cambio Climático e Industrias Extractivas, participó el 3 de noviembre, en un webinar sobre la “contra reforma” eléctrica en México organizado por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
As delegates from around the world finish up their business in Glasgow at the United Nations climate conference, Mexico has not increased its emissions-mitigation goal, as countries pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is doubling down on policies that would make his country the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in Latin America and the 16th largest in the world, even more of a polluter.
