Mexico’s president-elect said Tuesday that he will end fracking, the oil and gas extraction method that has just begun to take root in areas of the country’s north.
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Asked about the potential risks of fracking at a news conference, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, “We will no longer use that method to extract petroleum.”
Mexico has a huge potential shale formation in the Burgos basin, similar to the Texas Eagle Ford fields.
But while a few wells have been drilled, the Mexican government has only recently scheduled bidding on opening some blocks for commercial development through fracking.
Lopez Obrador also railed against private electricity generation contracts that displaced the government-owned Federal Electricity Commission, known as the CFE. He said that trend would be “corrected,” without saying whether he would seek to overturn existing contracts.
“The neoliberal governments deliberately closed the CFE plants in order to buy electricity from foreign companies at very high prices,” Lopez Obrador said. “All of that will be corrected.”
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