Jude Webber; Fuente: Financial Times 12.02.15
Oil is popularly known as black gold. Now the world’s biggest miner of another shiny precious metal is jumping on Mexico’s ambitious energy reforms to get in on the dirty black stuff.
Alberto Baillères, website like this head of Grupo Bal, which counts silver producer Peñoles y Fresnilloamong its companies (as well as upscale department store the Palacio de Hierro), has launched a new oil company, called Petrobal.
A bold move, given the oil price slump? No, says Oscar López-Velarde, a partner at Ernst & Young’s energy practice. “Oil and gas companies are suffering because of the price crash but the rest of the economy is doing great. Peñoles is just capitalising on [previous] high minerals prices.”
Mexico has already seen the creation of one exploration-focused company, Sierra Oil and Gas, follwoing reforms that are opening up the country’s nearly 80-year-old monopoly on investment in oil and gas. The first bidding round is under way and the first contracts are scheduled to be awarded in July.
But other Mexican conglomerates are also moving into, or expanding their interests in, energy. They include Grupo Alfa’s Newpek (which has shale operations in the US); Tabasco Oil Company which is 70 per cent owned by telecoms magnate Carlos Slim’s Grupo Carso, and other Alfa subsidiary called Alfasid.
What is Baillères’s unique selling point? Well, he has snagged Carlos Morales Gil, the hugely experienced former head of exploration at Pemex, the state oil company, to front Petrobal.
As this report in El Economista points out, he is not the only ex-Pemex executive to have jumped to the private sector. Chances are, he won’t be the last.
