Mexico Trucker Online

<h4>Lawmakers defy AMLO leftists protesting measures supporters say will overhaul industry as production declines</h4>

 Ignoring thousands of left-wing demonstrators. lawmakers Tuesday and passed constitutional reforms aimed at allowing foreigners limited investment in Mexico’s vulnerable petroleum industry.

After debating over the protests of leftist legislators who had taken over the podium in the Chamber of Deputies, the lawmakers passed the measures 395-82.

“With this reform the national economy wins; all Mexicans win,” President Felipe Calderon said in a nationally televised message several hours after the vote. “And it’s particularly important that Mexicans have reached agreement at a time when the world economy goes through a particularly adverse situation.”

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There has been much talk lately in the news and on the radio and TV shows about Americans heading to Mexico to partake of the cheaper fuels available there.

This quote from The Sanctuary gave me a chuckle and went on to explain why the fuels are so much cheaper in Mexico.

As nativists continue to falsely claim that “illegal aliens are stealing from U.S. taxpayers”, it looks as if U.S. citizens have found a way to steal from Mexican taxpayers.

Here in Mexico, gasoline is about a dollar cheaper per gallon than in the US because the Mexican government subsidizes it’s national oil monopoly PEMEX. In Monterrey last weekend, Regualr gas was selling for $7.99 pesos per liter ($3.30 US) with premium gas or Magna selling at $8.99 pesos per liter $(3.65 US per gallon).

Gasoline prices in Mexico are set by law. In addition, low sulphur diesel (500ppm) and Ultra Low Sulphur diesel (15ppm) which is largely imported from the US is selling at $5.95 pesos per liter ($2.40 US per gallon) Mexican further subsidizes dieself to it’s commercial fleet with a 20% discount on direct billing.

Because of low refinery capacity, Mexico imports approximately 40% of it’s gasoline and diesel from the US or sends it’s crude to US refineries along the Gulf Coast for refining.

So is crossing the border for a fill up worth the money saved versus the time and trouble involved?

Consider border wait times now that can be more than two hours and major crossings. The cost of the toll to cross back into the US. The hassle of being treated like a criminal by your own government, all to save a few bucks? You decide!

We’re hearing unsubstantiated rumors of Americans going into Mexico and filling up gas cans and containers to take back across the border, and frankly, while it might be attempted, they are asking for more trouble than the money being saved.

For instance, when asked about the legality of importing fuels from Mexico, the Customs and Border Protection responded with this press release.

After seeing a spike in extra tanks and containers, U.S. Customs and Border Protection published an advisory telling people that anything not in their vehicle’s gas tank qualifies as a commercial import and must be brought in and documented through commercial lanes.

“We’re not stopping people who are coming in with just one diesel tank, but we’re looking at people who are coming in with several of them,” CBP spokeswoman Mucia Dovalina told Mexico Trucker Online.

In a phone interview Thursday, Dovalina said the advisory applied to “anything that is not in actual use or that is not fitting to the vehicle that is in operation of the vehicle.”

Pemex has traditionally been a great source of national pride, making Mexico one of the world’s top oil producers and producing about a third of the government’s revenue.

But its proven oil reserves are shrinking, and it lacks refining capacity, particularly for low-sulfur diesel being phased in under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

So even while the nation still exports crude oil, it imports about 40 percent of its fuel.

“Mexico currently is a net exporter of hydrocarbons. Local refining is not sufficient to meet local demand, so Mexico imports petroleum products to make up the balance,” said Mariano Gurfinkel of the Center of Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. “In practice, some of the Mexican oil is refined in the Gulf Coast refineries and petroleum products are sent to Mexico. … There might be some targeted subsidies, but that’s a sovereign decision of Mexico.”

While Mexico is the biggest importer of U.S refined product, In the overall scheme of things, it’s not a huge number.

Pemex in 1993 invested $1 billion in Shell Oil Co.’s Deer Park refinery to help process its oil.

I have not found breakdowns of which refineries export how much to Mexico, but the most recent data, from March, showed 100,000 barrels of U.S.-refined gasoline per day going to Mexico — roughly 1 percent of the 9 million per day consumed in the United States.

Diesel exports to Mexico were 46,000 barrels per day, compared with 4 million per day consumed here.

As a side note, I was listening to the Fucking Bozo, Dale Sommers this afternoon coming across the border and he was talking about the poor quality of Mexican fuels. Telling his listeners they would need decontaminants and such. Who believes his bullshit anymore. It is obvious he knows nothing about what he talks about. With the statistics at hand, he is also condemning US refined and exported fuels. That sort of set the record straight once again about Mr Sommers and company.

I’m due a filter change on my Volkswagon Jetta TDI, that is a diesel Jetta for those who don’t know. With 45,000 miles on the motor and the original fuel filter on it, we’ll see how “dirty” Mexican diesel is. I would imagine that probably 80% of the fuel burned in that car has been bought at the pumps in Mexico, the other 20% coming out of the tanks of my big rig. I get around to it, I’ll publish photos of the contents. We’ll see how dirty the fuel is.

By Héctor Tobar, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 7, 2008

MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday that a shifting political climate in the U.S. could improve the chances that a new administration in Washington will help bring a comprehensive reform law that would legalize the status of Mexican immigrants.

In a wide-ranging conversation with The Times, Calderon, scheduled to visit California next week, also addressed the decline of the government-owned oil fields and the war against drug traffickers that has claimed thousands of lives.

“My hope is that whoever the next president is, and whoever is in the new [U.S.] Congress, will have a broader and more comprehensive view” of the immigration problem, Calderon said. Speaking at the presidential residence Los Pinos on the morning after the Super Tuesday presidential primaries in the U.S., Calderon said he took heart from the results, though he did not mention specific candidates.

“It seems to me that the most radical and anti-immigrant candidates have been left behind and have been put in their place by their own electorate,” Calderon said.

He arrives in Sacramento on Feb. 13 on the final leg of a five-day U.S. trip that will also take him to Chicago, Boston and New York to visit local officials and representatives of Mexican immigrant communities.

In Sacramento, he is scheduled to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Latino legislators. In Los Angeles the following day, he is to meet Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and migrant groups’ representatives assembled by the nine Mexican consulates in California.

He will tell fellow Mexican citizens “that we are actively working to defend their human rights,” Calderon said. “No matter their immigration status, they are human beings with dignity and rights that should be respected. We are working, with the full effort of the government, to bring a halt to the campaigns that harass migrants.”

Calderon said one goal of his trip, which will include a talk Monday at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, was to build public support for an immigration reform law that would allow millions of Mexicans to work in the U.S.

He said Americans would recognize “sooner or later” that the health of the U.S. economy is linked to integration with its neighbor and “the increased flow of goods, services, investment” between the two countries “and also greater freedom in labor markets.”

Such liberal economic orthodoxy also informs Calderon’s beliefs about the policies that can best create jobs in Mexico and slow the annual flight of thousands of his countrymen northward.

Despite criticisms from farmers that the North American Free Trade Agreement is ruining Mexican agriculture and spurring migration to the U.S., Calderon said he remained a firm believer in the power of free markets to improve the lot of Mexico’s rural poor.

“The truth is that exports from the Mexican countryside have increased fourfold since NAFTA” was implemented, Calderon said.

Still, the federal government will continue to provide $20 billion in annual farm subsidies. And to ameliorate the effect of the U.S. economic slowdown on the Mexican economy, Calderon is proposing a massive series of public works projects and other measures.

On Wednesday, Calderon announced the creation of a $25-billion fund to build highways, bridges and other infrastructure projects so that “we don’t have to depend on the external motor of the U.S. economy” to keep Mexico growing.

Calderon also warned that the Mexican people faced difficult decisions related to the declining production of the country’s oil fields, the government’s main source of foreign revenue.

With reserves in its aging offshore Cantarell field diminishing, the state-owned oil company Pemex needs funds to pay for exploration in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The money, Calderon said, could come only from two sources: reducing government spending for public services or looking to the example of China, Norway and Brazil, where the state-owned oil companies benefit from private investment.

Private investment in Pemex has been a political poison pill in Mexico, where the publicly owned natural resource is considered by many a pillar of national sovereignty.

“This is a problem we should resolve now so as not to place future generations in danger,” Calderon said. “I’ve always worked from the assumption that Pemex will not be privatized. But I am sure there will be a more understanding environment to objectively evaluate what’s best for Pemex.”

Whereas declining oil revenue is a long-term challenge, the most immediate threat Calderon faces is organized crime. Violence linked to drug trafficking has claimed more than 2,000 lives since Calderon took office in December 2006.

Despite progress, including the arrest of more than 20,000 organized-crime suspects and huge hauls of illicit drugs and cash, much work remains to be done, Calderon said.

Drug traffickers are a dominant presence in several border cities and many rural towns.

“Victory will be achieved when the authorities have complete control over their own territory . . . when the authorities have total command over and complete faith in the police forces,” he said.

U.S. legislators are debating a $550-million proposal by the Bush administration to assist Mexico and Central America in the battle against traffickers.

“This is a battle in which Mexico obviously needs the help of the United States to win,” Calderon said.