Mexico in full swing

A year of further energy liberalisation and continued upstream and midstream expansion lies ahead

Mexico's oil and gas industry will be completely open to private investment by end-2018. For the first time in almost eight decades, domestic and foreign companies will be allowed to do business throughout the value chain, from oil exploration to service stations. Free entry and exit, competition and transparency will be the new normal. It has been a three-year process to get to this point. After constitutional reform and new secondary legislation that ended Pemex's monopoly over the oil industry, implementation of market reform advanced in gradual steps. It began with exploration and production: in the summer of 2015, offshore blocks in the Gulf of Mexico's shallow waters were auctioned. Tw