US legislators complain to Trump on Mexico energy policy
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Standing in front of a reopened coal-fired power plant, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Saturday defiantly rejected complaints by a group of 43 U.S. lawmakers about government policy favoring state companies in the energy market.
Six U.S. senators and 37 representatives wrote this week to President Donald Trump complaining about “actions by the government of Mexico that threaten U.S. energy companies’ investment and market access and undermine the spirit of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” that went into effect this year.
López Obrador rejected the complaints, saying his administration would continue to give preference to the government's Petroleos Mexicanos oil company and the state-owned electrical utility, arguing the free trade agreement did not cover Mexico's energy sector. López Obrador has made fossil fuels and state-owned companies the centerpieces of his economic policy.
“In line with the legal framework we have, we are going to give preference to Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission, let that be clear,” López Obrador said at an event Saturday marking the restarting of an old coal-fired power plant in northern Mexico.
López Obrador has rejected environmental arguments against the government's aging, dirty coal and fuel-oil generating plants, saying that because they are government-owned, the government must defend them. That has led him to rewrite rules to make it harder for cleaner, newer private-built power plants to compete.
Even while most of the world is turning away from coal to adopt renewables or cleaner gas-fired plants, López Obrador seemed to revel in what for most leaders would be bad optics.
“I am very happy to be here, and here, at the Nava thermoelectric complex, to tell those who defend neoliberal policy, that we are...