On a recent scorching afternoon in his home state of Tabasco, the president of Mexico celebrated his government’s latest triumph: a new oil refinery.

Though not yet operational, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hailed the refinery as a centerpiece in his grand campaign to secure Mexico’s energy independence.

“We ignored the sirens’ song, the voices that predicted, in good faith, perhaps, the end of the oil age and the massive arrival of electric cars and renewable energies,” he told the cheering crowd.

At a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the need to move away from fossil fuels that contribute to catastrophic climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked a global shift in the opposite direction, with the United States and European countries moving to increase oil and gas production to counter bans on Russian energy.
But Mexico is going even further.

Driven by Mr. López Obrador’s long-held goal to wrest control of the energy sector from private companies and allow state firms to dominate the market, the government is undermining efforts to expand renewable power and staking the nation’s future on fossil fuels.

The policy is central to Mr. López Obrador’s ambition to reverse what he sees as corrupt privatization of the industry, guarantee Mexican energy sovereignty and return the country to the glory days when oil created thousands of jobs and helped bolster the economy.

To this end, Mexican authorities are using the might of their regulatory agencies to keep renewable firms out of the market, blocking their power plants from operating, and instead propping up fossil fuel-powered plants owned or run by the state, according to interviews with more than a dozen former government officials, analysts and energy executives.

As a result, Mexico will almost certainly fail to meet its pledge to the world to reduce its carbon output, according to analysts. The country has also potentially jeopardized billions of dollars in renewable investment and created another source of tension with the Biden administration, which has made combating climate change a key pillar of its foreign policy agenda.

“People say: ‘how is he going to fulfill his commitments to climate change?’ And I always tell people, ‘well, he doesn’t care,’” Tony Payan, a Mexico expert at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, said of Mr. López Obrador. “He’s an oil man.”

The president’s press office, Mexico’s Energy Ministry and the state electric company did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. López Obrador has argued that while the transition to renewable energy will happen eventually, Mexico is simply not ready.

“That technological advancement will become a reality,” he said during the refinery inauguration. “To get there, we need more time.”

The government has not completely abandoned renewable energy. It plans to spend about $1.6 billion to build a giant solar plant in northern Mexico as well as refurbish more than a dozen state-owned hydroelectric plants.

Mexico generates nearly 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels, while renewables and nuclear power provide the remaining 20 percent, according to government figures.

Mr. López Obrador’s supporters also contend that the government’s strategy will allow the state more control over the energy sector and any shift to renewables. The policy is critical in a country where public oversight of the private sector has often been weak, according to Fluvio Ruíz Alarcón, an analyst and former adviser at Pemex, the state-owned oil firm.
“Once a sector as important in our country as energy is controlled by private hands, state regulation becomes very, very difficult,” Mr. Ruíz said. Keeping the sector under state control “gives you the ability to manage the energy transition at your own pace.”

For Mexico, sovereignty over energy production holds a special place. In the 1930s, President Lázaro Cárdenas seized the assets of foreign oil firms, including U.S. corporations, accused of exploiting Mexican workers and nationalized the industry, an iconic event celebrated as a national holiday.

Mr. López Obrador, who hails Mr. Cárdenas as an inspiration, has made regaining a near monopoly over energy for the state a top priority.