The Road To Mexico -- Mexico's President Will Halt Hydrocarbon Auctions For Three Years -- March 5, 2019

The Southern Surge: tracking will now be at this site. 

Updates

March 6, 2019 a.m. CT: The Boston Globe, headline story, is reporting that more than 76,000 illegals entered across the southern border in February, 2019, double the number one year earlier. 

Later, 9:12 p.m. CT: it was about two hours ago I implied that the southern border was likely to be the big story this year or next. Now, just two hours later, Drudge has made it the banner story:

The good news: it looks like Congress has solved the tight labor market facing US employers. Don't build the fence; don't change the laws; just let folks arrive en masse. I assume JFK, et al, will leave immigration / passport control unmanned and allow foreigners in willy-nilly.  

Original Post

 
The "road-to-Mexico" tag is here. Mid-February, 2019, these recent posts:

• Mexican leftist president flip flops: will allow fracking
• Pemex could fail; some say Pemex is doomed; if Pemex fails, Mexico fails
• Mexico gives Pemex a $3.5 billion tax cut
• Mexico to give a $5.2 billion stimulus package to Pemex.

The tea leaves suggest Pemex is at best on life support in the ICU.

By the way, before I forget, has anyone seen the most recent headlines regarding the surge of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border?  These are the headlines in the last 24 hours -- one seventeen minutes ago -- (note the sources: Washington Post, NPR, and Axios):

If Pemex fails, Mexico fails, and Mexico will look a lot like Venezuela.

But I digress.

Back to the road to Mexico.

Platts is reporting that Mexico's decision to delay auctions on new oil and gas development until at least 2021 will result in billions of dollars in revenue losses and significantly stymie new production over the next decade, according to a member of the country's National Hydrocarbon Commission said Tuesday.

Another digression: we will probably never know but my hunch is that Commissioner Hector Moreira Rodriguez' time on the commission is soon to come to an end.

From the linked article:

• delays in the country's oil and natural gas auctions will delay the new president's oil, gas proudciton goals
• production exceeding 2 million bopd are now seen as unrealistic (put that in perspective: four small counties in North Dakota could produce 2 million bopd if unfettered)
• it appears that Mexico will be "lucky" to hold output at 1.6 million bopd through 2024
• every year, Mexico delays a bidding, it costs the country $1 billion 
• in December, 2018, the new president said that Mexico would halt its hydrocarbon auction rounds by three years
• really, really bad timing, because right now, the US more than ever, needs heavy oil that Mexico could provide 

There's an essay in a recent WSJ Review, page C6, February 16 - 17, 2019, featuring Jim Collins, a business guru known for his best-selling books Built to Last, Good to Great, and "other staples of the corporate bookshelf."

He's 61 years old. He's been around. He taught management at Stanford University in the 1990s. He is known for something called "Level 5 leadership."

Near the end of that essay:

Mr Collins, whose principles include "confront the brutal facts," is facing some of his own. He's afraid of disease (he recently lost two close friends to cancer) and is concerned that there might be a stretch of political or global turbulence ahead that none of us can accurately predict."

I'm thinking maybe Mr Collins might want to take a six-month sabbatical to study the southern border.