Frontrunner AMLO reiterates that he will prevent oil from returning to foreign hands

According to Reuters on Wednesday February 8, left-wing Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 11-percentage point lead over rivals Ricardo Anaya of the left-right coalition.

Meanwhile ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Jose Antonio Meade slipped two points from an earlier opinion poll to 18 percent, 16 points behind the frontrunner.

Two time presidential runner-up Lopez Obrador has promised to review billions of dollars of private oil contracts and wipe out corruption. He vows more social spending without upsetting Mexico’s macro-economic stability.

On Monday Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that he will seek to prevent oil from falling back into the hands of foreigners and reiterated that he will review the contracts that were recently granted.

“We are going to review all of these contracts and we are not going to allow oil, which belongs to the people and the nation, to return to the hands of foreigners.”

This could prove interesting since the current Mexican presidential administration, which emerged from a political party widely viewed as corrupt by the Mexican people, has awarded about 90 contracts for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons, committing investments for around 170 billion dollars.

The tenders are part of an energy reform approved in 2013 that opened the sector, once reserved to the state, to private capital.

The reform was an attempt to shore up the declining oil and gas production and increase oil resources in a low-price environment, 75 years after the nationalization of the industry in 1938.