Mexico’s next president appoints energy scientist as Pemex boss

MEXICO CITY, August 26 (Reuters) – Mexico’s future president appointed academic Victor Rodriguez as the next top manager Debt burden Oil giant Pemex was among the latest high-level nominations for the country’s financially volatile and politically sensitive energy sector on Monday.

At At a press conference, Rodriguez said he was working with the Ministry of Finance. Was essential stabilize The state-owned enterprise. He also stressed the need to produce more environmentally friendly fuels.

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“We must maintain the basis of our energy needs, which is oil and gas, while we drive the energy transition,” he said. “We will make enormous efforts to develop renewable energy sources.”

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office in October, has announced almost all her cabinet Ministers, a mix of new faces And Remnants of the outgoing government of their left-wing mentor.

Rodriguez, a physicist and energy economics expert with long-standing ties to Sheinbaum, has no oil industry background. But in 2009 he co-authored a paper with Sheinbaum on Mexican energy policy and development, warning a growing gap with the sustainability goals.

As a professor, Rodriguez most recently directed energy systems studies in the engineering department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

It is not uncommon for Mexican presidents to favor close confidants over veterans of the oil and gas industry in order to Head Pemex is the largest company in the country and has been an important contributor to the state coffers for decades.

Like her predecessor, Sheinbaum supports giving Pemex more power over oil and gas production and largely sidelining other companies. But unlike Lopez Obrador, she has shown more interest in green energy projects and predicts that they will be a “hallmark” of her government.

The new Pemex manager will be tasked with reversing the long-term slump in crude oil prices. Production has fallen by more than half since its peak of 3.4 million barrels a day two decades ago.

Pemex is one of the most indebted oil companies in the world; its financial debt alone amounts to around 100 billion dollars.

In recent years, Pemex has sought to expand refining, by far the company’s biggest source of losses, as Lopez Obrador argued that Mexico needed to be freed from its long-standing dependence on gasoline imports, primarily from U.S. refineries.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; additional reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez, Adrianna Barrera and Sarah Morland; editing by Kylie Madry and Richard Chang)