Stygius

Mexico and peak production

The debate over a global peak in oil production my be a moot point in Mexico, as Land of Black Gold relays:

Page A4, with a bullet.

The world's second most productive oil field might be about to cause a big problem with oil supply, and the WSJ puts this on page 4?

WSJ: Mexico's Oil Output May Decline Sharply.

Oh great. PEMEX, Mexico's state-owned oil firm, produced an internal report that the Wall Street Journal got a look at.

An internal study reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows water and gas are encroaching more quickly than expected in Cantarell, Mexico's biggest oil field, and might cause output to drop precipitously over the next few years. Currently, Cantarell produces two million barrels of oil a day, or six of every 10 barrels produced by Mexico.

The stock reply is that new reserves will be found, but there is nothing on land of Cantarell's magnitude, and Gulf of Mexico fields are not as promising as originally claimed (not that the monopoly can even finance exploration and extraction).

The company is not just facing a supply catastrophe, according to BusinessWeek last December:

Indeed, in recent years the company has only been able to make ends meet through massive borrowing, so that it now owes a staggering $42.5 billion, including $24 billion in off-balance-sheet debt. Why? Because Pemex is the Mexican government's cash cow. The state-run company pays out over 60% of its revenue in royalties and taxes, and those funds pay for a third of the federal government's budget. If oil prices drop or there are no major new discoveries of crude, that could spell big trouble for Pemex -- and Mexico's finances.

My emphasis. And this financial crisis happens upon PEMEX while oil prices are at historic highs. Imagine what will happen if prices quickly fall; and if the oil simply isn't there, pricing doesn't exactly matter.

So, not only does the US face a coming supply problem of a first-order magnitude, but it will simultaneously face a Mexico teetering on the brink of political and economic collapse as PEMEX revenues decline or disappear, with all of the attendant social upheaval that will inevitably spill north.

Something to think about.

Mexico arrests terrorist suspect

Associated Press:

Mexico said it has detained a man believed linked to the groups that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The federal attorney general's office ... identified the man as Amer Haykel and said he was a British citizen born in Beirut, Lebanon.

"According to U.S. authorities, he is linked to extremist groups believed to be involved with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York," the agency said.

It sounds like he was being tracked by the US, who asked Mexico to pick him up.

Friday Update: Oops.

Argentina & Dirty War immunity

As Chilean courts repeatedly deny Pinochet his legal fig leaves, it is wonderful to see Argentina confronting its own past after its supreme court threw out legislation immunizing Dirty War crimes. See Wikipedia and GlobalSecurity for background; and NSA on Kissinger's role. (See also this interesting, more theoretical book: Mass Atrocity, Ordinary Evil, and Hannah Arendt.)

Canada considering terrorist "control measures"

Via Jurist. Inspired by the UK's efforts to grapple with legal criminal controls on terrorist suspects, Canada is considering "control measures" that will apply to both immigrants and citizens. Currently the government is developing measures strictly for immigrant suspects, but the Globe and Mail reports that Justice Minister Irwin Cotler wants to include Canadian citizens as well.

Canada has long had the obnoxious habit of considering terrorists from other countries A-Okay so long as they didn't commit their crimes in Canada. Thus, in the 1990s Canadian immigrant communities became fertile fields for transnational organizations recruiting and fundraising for terrorism abroad. While Canada has a variety of legal mechanisms in place, it rarely exercises them.

Stewart Bell is a Canadian journalist who writes on this all the time. See this March 4 article. Also see his book Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism to the World. More generally, see PBS Frontline's Son of Al-Qaeda, the story of the Khadr family.