Mexico will hold a private bidding round for the nation’s shale oil fields this year in part to cater to continued interest from U.S. drillers eyeing expansion south of the border, according to Deputy Energy Minister Lourdes Melgar. The country’s shale auction “will be this year,” Melgar said in an interview at the Foreign Affairs Mexico Energy Future Conference in New York. Mexico temporarily suspended plans for the country’s first-ever auction of its so-called unconventional oil and natural gas fields last year amid falling international crude prices. “Companies working on the U.S. side of the border have expressed interest in working on other side of the border,” Melgar said. The interested parties are the “usual suspects” that are producing oil and natural gas in U.S. shale fields and are “mostly independent companies that have been very successful in shale development,” she said. The decision to proceed with the sale […]