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amborin

(16,631 posts)
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 10:46 AM Mar 2016

Hillary Pushed Mexico's Oil (PEMEX) Privatization (Sacred 'Oro Negro'): For Benefit of Her US Donors

WikiLeaks: Hillary Clinton Pushed Mexico's Oil Privatization


Clinton's team pushed to “quietly” help the Mexican government pass the energy reform.

While serving as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton led a series of actions to promote the privatization of Mexico's energy industry, documents revealed by Wikileaks show.


According to the website DesMog, the U.S. democratic presidential hopeful and her staff at the State Department were actively promoting the privatization of Mexico’s oil industry after then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon began speaking about possible reforms in 2008.

The controversial energy reform was passed by current President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2014.



The country's hydrocarbons have been constitutionally managed by the state-owned company, Pemex since 1938, after the Mexican oil expropriation.

The website identifies three U.S. officials as being key in this process of pushing for an opening of Mexico’s energy sector:

David Goldwyn, the first U.S. International Energy Coordinator who was named by Clinton in 2009; Carlos Pascual, Goldwyn's successor and former U.S. ambassador to Mexico; as well as Neil Brown, a former top-level staffer for Senator Richard Lugar.

“Mexico officials remain extremely sensitive about any public — especially US — comments regarding energy reform and production,” reads a February 2010 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, prior to a visit to the country by Goldwyn.

“We should retain the (U.S. government's) long-standing policy of not commenting publicly on these issues while quietly offering to provide assistance in areas of interest to the (Mexican government).”


Clinton's former collaborators now work in the private sector and stand to gain financially from the energy reforms they helped create, DesMog said.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:

"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Wikileaks-Hilary-Clinton-Pushed-Mexicos-Oil-Privatization-20150810-0011.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english


for the purposes of companies as the ExxonMobil, Chevron, British Petroleum, the American Petroleum Institute and independent United States oil producers (According to DeSmong). - See more at: http://oronegro.mx/2015/08/22/hillary-pascual-pena-traicion-a-mexico/?lang=en#sthash.GfIaj88e.dpuf

http://oronegro.mx/2015/08/22/hillary-pascual-pena-traicion-a-mexico/?lang=en


New records obtained by DeSmog shed further light on the role the U.S.government has played to help implement the privatization of Mexico’s oil and gas industry, opening it up to international firms beyond state-owned company PEMEX (Petroleos Mexicanos).

Obtained from both the City of San Antonio, Texas and University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA), the records center around the U.S.–Mexico Oil and Gas Business Export Conference, held in May in San Antonio and hosted by both the U.S.Department of Trade and Department of Commerce, as well as UTSA.

They reveal the U.S. government acting as a mediator between Mexico’s government and U.S. oil and gas companies seeking to cash in on a policy made possible by the behind-the-scenes efforts of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s U.S. State Department. State Department involvement was first revealed here on DeSmog, pointing to emails obtained via Freedom of Information Act and cables made available via Wikileaks.

The records also call into question the claim made by Mexico’s Energy Secretary, Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, that the privatization policy was “100 percent made in Mexico.” Coldwell said this in reaction to DeSmog’s investigation showing heavy State Department involvement in ushering in the policy.

“It is absolutely false that Hillary Clinton or any other United States government entity had anything to do with the Mexican energy reform,” Coldwell stated.

If the U.S. government had nothing to with creating the policy architecture to begin with, and its own records tell the opposite story, then it sure is shocking how involved it is now in the attempt to help U.S. companies build their profits from the new policy regime.

“Want to Grow Your Business?”

Indeed, event organizers boasted of the convening as a business opportunity for U.S. companies.

“The conference is a one-day seminar for U.S. exporters who want to take advantage of the energy reform in Mexico’s oil and gas industry,” explained a press release ahead of the event. “The conference will bring together experts from government, business, and academic sectors to discuss the opening markets in Mexico. Experts will show companies in Texas what they can do to position themselves to get in on the ground level of new market opportunities.”

Thomas Tunstall, researcher at UTSA and author of a recent report on the economic impacts of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Eagle Ford Shale funded by lobbying powerhouse America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), echoed these comments in a quote he provided ahead of the event.

“Not only is this an opportunity for companies in Mexico,” said Tunstall, “but this prospect for shale oil and gas exploration and production represents an export opportunity for U.S. companies that have pioneered the unconventional techniques in use now.”

An email blasted out to conference invitees by the U.S. Commercial Service, a wing of the U.S. Department of Commerce, shows how the event

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-government-acts-as-mediator-in-mexicos-lucrative-oil-and-gas-privatization/5470555


Originally stored on a private server, with Clinton and her closest advisors using the server and private accounts, the emails confirm Clinton’s State Department helped to break state-owned company Pemex‘s (Petroleos Mexicanos) oil and gas industry monopoly in Mexico, opening up the country to international oil and gas companies. And two of the Coordinators helping to make it happen, both of whom worked for Clinton, now work in the private sector and stand to gain financially from the energy reforms they helped create.

The appearance of the emails also offers a chance to tell the deeper story of the role the Clinton-led State Department and other powerful actors played in opening up Mexico for international business in the oil and gas sphere. That story begins with a trio.

The Trio

David Goldwyn, who was the first International Energy Coordinator named by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009, sits at the center of the story. As revealed by DeSmog, the State Department redacted the entire job description document for the Coordinator role.

Goldwyn now runs an oil and gas industry consulting firm called Goldwyn Global Strategies, works of counsel as an industry attorney at the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, and works as a fellow at the industry–funded think tanks Atlantic Council and Brookings Institution.
David Goldwyn; Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

The emails show that, on at least one instance, Goldwyn also used his private “[email protected]” (Goldwyn Global Strategies) email address for State Department business.

It remains unclear if he used his private or State Department email address on other instances, as only his name appears on the other emails. But Cheryl Mills, a top aide to Secretary Clinton at the time, initiated the email that he responded to on his private account.

David Goldwyn Private Email Address
Image Credit: U.S Department of State

Carlos Pascual, Goldwyn’s successor as International Energy Coordinator, who oversaw the creation of the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources as mandated by the Department’s 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, serves as another key character.

So too does Neil Brown, a former top-level staffer for Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) who now works at the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR).

snip

Cashing In

Goldwyn, Pascual and Brown now stand to gain financially from the Mexico energy reform architecture they helped envision and construct.

Goldwyn

Goldwyn works of-counsel for Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, a firm that helped the Enterprise Product Partners become the first company to get a permit to export processed oil condensate from the U.S. Department of Commerce in June 2014. In a biography appearing at the end of a September 2014 presentation he delivered to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Sutherland partner Jacob Dweck disclosed he is presently “assisting clients” looking to export crude oil “as part of an exchange or swap.”

Doing a “swap” means exporting U.S.-produced crude oil to Mexico and trading it with Mexican-produced oil, serving as a way to wedge open the door on the current ban on U.S. oil exports.

Dweck and his Sutherland colleague Shelley Wong both sat on the Brookings Institution Crude Oil Task Force co-chaired by Goldwyn. All three of them contributed to a September 2014 Brookings report calling for increased exports of U.S.-produced crude oil, which was written in reaction to another report they funded and released simultaneously written byNational Economic Research Associates (NERA).

Just months later, Columbia University’s Adrián Lajous released a 13-page white paper calling for U.S. crude oil exchanges with Mexico. In the acknowledgements for the paper, he thanked Dweck for “comments and suggestions that helped improve” it.

Pascual

Pascual now sits as a Fellow at an outfit many believe is industry-funded, but which does not disclose its funding on its website: Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. The Center does, however, disclose it “welcomes support” from corporations. Both officials at Columbia and its spokesperson at BerlinRosin did not respond to repeated requests for comment on funding sent by DeSmog.

Besides Columbia, Pascual also works as Senior Vice President of Global Energy Affairs at IHS Inc., a for-profit consultancy business that provides analysis on behalf of corporate clients.

IHS has a unit devoted to “evaluating future options in Mexico with a scenarios-based approach built on quantitative and qualitative data to help shape a successful upstream entry strategy for Mexico that centers on the client’s specific needs,” its website explains. “A variety of foreign companies – ranging from the Majors to Independents to service sector firms – are expressing interest in capitalizing on Mexico’s largely untapped resource potential in six major plays, including: deepwater, offshore gas, shale and marginal PUDs in conventional areas.”

The Center on Global Energy Policy has also proven a friendly forum to promote energy reform efforts, which has both published pro-reform reports and also housed panels on the topic. Adrián Lajous, another Fellow at the center, formerly served as CEO for Pemex and wrote his own pro-reform paper in June 2014 bankrolled by none other than Goldman Sachs.

Pascual recently testified in front of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee in support of energy reform efforts in Mexicowearing his IHS Inc. hat, with his placard referring to him as “Ambassador Pascual.”

He had previously done the same thing on multiple occasions as head of the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources when he was officially serving as an Ambassador.

snip

KKR, where Brown now works, has already put its feet on the ground to profit from energy reform efforts in Mexico. This may explain why Brown and Petraeus co-wrote a July 2014 opinion piece published by the Houston Chronicle titled, “Mexico’s miracle: Political productivity.”

In December 2014, Petraeus and colleagues from KKR took a trip to Mexico and expressed excitement over the “promise that the financial community sees in this country.”

“Obviously we’re looking very closely at the energy space, upstream and downstream production, the entire gamut of that,”Petraeus told Bloomberg at the time.

His trip to Mexico came just two months after he co-authored a CFR report with Robert Zoellick (former head of the World Bank, now a chairman of international advisors at Goldman Sachs) calling for the “integration” of North America’s energy markets.

Just months later, KKR announced the launch of a joint venture with Monterra Energy, a new start-up created in the aftermath of Mexico’s energy reforms. KKR will serve as financier for the development of midstream oil and gas assets (like pipelines and related delivery infrastructure) owned by Monterra in Mexico.

Brown and KKR did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

snip

Hillary Clinton recently released her energy and climate plans for her presidential campaign, lauded by some.

But to date, she has not commented on the energy reform efforts in Mexico her State Department helped spearhead, which will usher in more deepwater offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore fracking in Mexico’s portion of the Eagle Ford Shale basin. It will also flood the electricity grid with fracked gas emanating from the U.S., a fact proudly proclaimed by Goldwyn and the U.S. Department of Energy.

“[A]s secretary of state, we know that there was quite a revolving door between the oil and gas lobby and her people at State and on her previous campaign staff,” Naomi Klein, author of the book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate,” said in a recent appearance on Democracy Now! “And I think there’s real reason for concern about whether or not she would be willing to stand up to the oil and gas lobby on Keystone, on Arctic drilling, [or] on any…other issues.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/12/hillary-clinton-state-department-emails-mexico-energy-reform-and-the-revolving-door/


It's hard to over-state the significance of PEMEX to Mexico. It's a sacred part of Mexico's national heritage that was heinously violated and exploited by the US in the early 20th Century.

Mystery of The Greystone Mansion Murders | New York ...
www.newyorksocialdiary.com/.../mystery-of-the-greystone-mansion-mu...
Aug 30, 2007 - By the early 1920s, E.L.Doheny Sr. was one of the richest men in the world with hugely productive oil fields in the southwest and Mexico.


Dark Side of Fortune - Margaret Leslie Davis - Paperback ...
www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn...
University of California Press
After developing massive oil wells in Mexico, Doheny built an international oil empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. But in 1924 the ...


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Hillary Pushed Mexico's Oil (PEMEX) Privatization (Sacred 'Oro Negro'): For Benefit of Her US Donors (Original Post) amborin Mar 2016 OP
Kick. n/t Orsino Mar 2016 #1
thanks! amborin Mar 2016 #3
Jesus. AzDar Mar 2016 #2
NeoLiberal Jesus Agony Mar 2016 #9
Counterpunch, like USUncut, is propaganda. JaneyVee Mar 2016 #4
"Anything that isn't neoliberal consensus" forjusticethunders Mar 2016 #6
More generally, facts inconvenient for my candidate = propaganda Mufaddal Mar 2016 #7
in 1938 we called it "Red Mexico" for Cardenas's nationalization: the richie riches begged FDR MisterP Mar 2016 #5
didn't know that; thanks for posting! amborin Mar 2016 #8
knr snagglepuss Mar 2016 #10
 

JaneyVee

(19,877 posts)
4. Counterpunch, like USUncut, is propaganda.
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 12:17 PM
Mar 2016

Also, you've violated numerous copyrights by posting more than 4 paragraphs. Also, economics is more complex than some biased talking points.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mexico-prepares-for-oil-privatization-2014-08-13

Mufaddal

(1,021 posts)
7. More generally, facts inconvenient for my candidate = propaganda
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 02:31 PM
Mar 2016

And incidentally, Counterpunch has been hitting Bernie from the left for a very long time:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/02/why-bernie-sanders-is-no-jeremy-corbyn/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/03/why-bernie-sanders-is-a-dead-end/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/05/is-bernie-sanders-a-socialist/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/16/blood-traces-bernies-iraq-war-hypocrisy/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/23/why-bernie-sanders-really-did-win-nevadas-hispanic-vote/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/27/bernie-sanders-savior-or-seducer-of-the-anti-war-left/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/30/the-myth-of-bernie-sanders/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/bernie-sanders-cannot-save-us/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/21/bernie-out-of-the-closet-sanders-longstanding-deal-with-the-democrats/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/15/what-about-sierra-blanca-bernie-from-radioactive-waste-on-the-rio-grande-to-reparations/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/29/the-wheels-are-off-the-bernie-sanders-bandwagon/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/15/bernie-sanders-insists-saudi-arabia-should-kill-more-people/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/21/dont-get-berned-again-the-sanders-bribe/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/12/why-bernie-sanders-is-no-great-white-hope-for-black-america/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/12/the-ideological-perils-of-bernie-sanders/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/01/invest-in-activism-not-bernie-sanders/

And it goes on, and on, and on.

So yeah, obviously CP is just in the bag for Bernie and manufacturing anti-Clinton "propaganda."

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
5. in 1938 we called it "Red Mexico" for Cardenas's nationalization: the richie riches begged FDR
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 02:13 PM
Mar 2016

to invade, but he remembered that they'd tried to overthrow him 5 years before ...

amborin

(16,631 posts)
8. didn't know that; thanks for posting!
Fri Mar 4, 2016, 05:29 PM
Mar 2016

also read somewhere, perhaps wiki leaks, that the Clinton State Dept wanted (and wants) to keep their role in the privatization under the radar because it is so incendiary

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