Mexican state-owned oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) reported on Thursday a net loss of US$8.77 billion (169.8 billion Mexican pesos) for the fourth quarter of 2019, widened from a loss of US$8.1 billion (157.3 billion peso) for the same period of 2018, mainly due to lower crude oil exports. For a decade and a half, Pemex and Mexico have been grappling with continuously falling crude oil production. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been a vocal critic of the energy reform of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, who opened in 2013 Mexico’s oil and gas sector to private investment for the first time in seven decades. López Obrador seeks a greater role for Pemex in reversing the downward trend in Mexican oil production and is criticizing the energy reform and the foreign oil firms for failing to do so. López Obrador and Pemex have grand plans for reversing […]