“[There is] a general economic maxim: public [government] resources are really private, owned and exploited by a political elite, while private resources are really public, owned and managed by a multitude. Government-owned resources do not ‘belong to all of the people’ and allow ‘self determination;’ they belong to none or a very few.”
– R. Bradley, Foreword to G. Yeatts, Subsurface Wealth: The Struggle for Privatization in Argentina (Foundation for Economic Education, 1997), pp. xv–xvi.
The recent reform of Mexico’s Constitution to allow private investment (up to $20 billion in production-sharing agreements) still leaves state-owned PEMEX with a legal monopoly for oil and gas development inside the country. But it is a start at reform that may turn into a deregulatory, privatization dynamic.
More, indeed, awaits to open the energy sector internal and external competition and to foreign investment in any amounts:
1) Competition to PEMEX in all oil and gas areas should be legalized;
2) PEMEX shares be allocated to the country’s private citizens;
3) Subsoil mineral rights should be assigned–with deed of title–to the (private) surface owners of land.…