Mexico’s Oil Industry 2019-2025: National Sovereignty and Energy Self- Sufficiency Without Development?

Abstract

This paper aims to put into perspective the insufficiency of the rescue strategy for
Mexico’s oil industry during the 2019-2025 period, which covers the administration of
Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and impacts the first months of the subsequent
administration. The paper’s hypothesis is that the energy policy actions applied to the oil
industry responded to a confused understanding of national sovereignty and energy self-
sufficiency in an environment where it is difficult to determine whether there was even a
legitimate concern about the country’s future development and the role that oil could
play in it, given the importance it had in the industrialization process (import substitution
industrialization and manufacturing exports-led growth). To clarify this, the text evaluates,
through the method of comparative statistical analysis, the degree of compliance of the
seven main hydrocarbon-related tasks self-imposed by the AMLO administration. Based
on official figures, it shows that, as of April 2025, none of the tasks had been completed,
except for that referred to the reversion of the energy reform and those determined by
inertial factors or financial and human resources to which the government had broad
access. In this environment, after a six-and-a-half-year wait and a great deal of committed
resources, the situation of the oil industry, far from improving, worsened.