Energy bill passes Chamber of Deputies after Senate approval

Mexico’s historic energy reform, which will open the country’s oil industry to private investment, cleared another important legislative hurdle late Wednesday when Mexican deputies gave their approval to the bill just less than 24 hours after the Senate passed the controversial measure.

With 354 votes in favor and 134 against, the law is seeking to change certain clauses to Mexico’s Constitution that address state ownership of the oil industry. The Chamber of Deputies was still discussing certain minor provisions in the bill on Thursday.

The fast-track move by Congress sparked a scuffle between lawmakers from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), who have called for public protests against the opening up of the oil sector.

PRI Deputy Landy Berzuna was punched in the eye after she argued with PRD member Karen Quiroga, the Mexico City daily El Universal reported. A group of PRD deputies tried to block access to the lower chamber – even putting chains on the doors – to prevent the vote from taking place. Another PRD deputy, Antonio García Conejo, stripped down to his underwear during his intervention in the chamber to show that the law was taking away “what little Mexico still owns.”

Wednesday night’s heated session, which lasted until the early hours of Thursday morning, was marked by threats, verbal confrontations and jeering by lawmakers.

The PRD has accused the PRI and the conservative National Action Party (PAN), which also voted in favor of the reform, of treason, and claims that the bill is designed to privatize the entire energy industry.

You are going to end up as traitors to your country”

Leftist lawmakers have demanded that Mexicans be allowed to vote in a referendum in 2015 on whether or not they agree with the energy bill. If it passes in the lower house, the constitutional changes need to be ratified by the legislatures of 17 of the country’s 31 states.

Mexico’s oil industry was nationalized in 1938, but over the years state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) has been beset by falling sales and rising production costs. According to some analysts, Mexico’s production has dropped some 25 percent since 2004.

President Enrique Peña’s government wants to open certain aspects of the industry to private foreign and national investors but has assured that the company as well as the country’s petroleum reserves will remain in Mexican hands. Any production- and profit-sharing contracts and licenses would be signed directly with the government instead of with Pemex.

“You won’t be able to escape the judgment of history because what you are doing doesn’t have a name. It is a disgrace and treason to the homeland and that is the way you are going to end up: traitors to your country,” shouted Ricardo Monreal, a deputy from the leftist Citizens Movement Party, as he addressed PRI lawmakers on Wednesday.

Protests outside Congress have been taking place since the bill reached lawmakers. Supporters of leftist leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador have camped outside of the Chamber of Deputies where police barricaded the building to keep the protestors from gaining access during the debates.

On Wednesday, Peña Nieto, who was in South Africa for the memorial service of Nelson Mandela, sent congratulatory remarks to the Senate for its approval of his energy reform.

“This reform will allow Mexico to better take advantage of its resources to grow economically and create jobs in the coming years,” the president said.