Leaders in the Mexican speciality chemicals industry agree that reactivating the national petrochemicals industry is an imperative, given that Mexico has the hydrocarbon resources needed to feed it and that doing so would create thousands of jobs in the process and would attract a significant wave of private investment to the sector. The problem is how to implement this. National regulations give Pemex, the state-owned oil and gas company, a monopoly over the production of basic petrochemicals, but Pemex does not have the infrastructure needed to produce them at competitive prices. As a result, products like urea or ammonia end up being imported from countries such as Chile or Russia.

In order to take the petrochemicals industry back to its former glory, the country not only needs a more efficient framework for cooperation between Pemex and private investors but also more hydrocarbons. Based on its reserves, Pemex is the world’s 11th largest oil company, but production in its traditional ‘elephant’ deposit, Cantarell, is declining significantly, forcing it to look for other reservoirs, while the demand for energy in a country of over 100 million people continues to increase.