A California Professor Warns Mexico Is Squandering Its Biggest Asset
From: Nancy Harkey, Ph.D. and Professor Emeritus [e-mail her]

Mexico’s greatest single source of wealth is its access to rich fields of oil. But its greatest boondoggle is its mismanagement of this asset.

The Los Angeles Times business section has just published a lengthy report on Pemex, the state-owned petroleum Company that has been watching its shallowest, most easily accessed fields decline fairly rapidly, while doing nothing to locate the new, rich fields known to exist in the Gulf of Mexico.

At a high point in 2004, production was about 2 million barrels per day, but more recently has declined to about 1.46 million barrels: "a very serious loss.â€