Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the structural, political, and institutional factors underlying the Mexican state’s persistent failure to rescue pemex as a productive and financially sustainable enterprise. Drawing on the political economy of oil, the analysis shows how the historical defense of energy sovereignty—rooted in the 1938 oil expropriation—gave rise to a statist arrangement that, under conditions of weak institutions, fostered the politicization of the company, rent capture, and the fiscal and clientelist use of oil revenues. Building on the literature on National Oil Companies (NOCS), particularly the concept of soft budget constraints, this article traces how PEMEX accumulated inefficiencies, fiscal overextraction, and technological lag. The Mexican case is contrasted with Petrobras, highlighting how regulated competition, partial opening, corporate governance reforms, and functional separation enabled the Brazilian company to improve performance without relinquishing state ownership of natural resources. The article concludes that PEMEX’s crisis is not primarily technical but political: entrenched interest coalitions sustain the existing model and obstruct reforms aimed at maximizing oil rent, generating mounting costs for public finances and the national economy.
Author: Carlos Elizondo Mayer-Serra
Institution: Tecnológico de Monterrey
Language: Spanish
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7133205357
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