Pemex (a portmanteau of Petróleos Mexicanos, which translates to Mexican Petroleum in English; ˈpemeks) is the Mexican state-owned petroleum company managed and operated by the Mexican government. It was formed in 1938 by nationalization and expropriation of all private oil companies in Mexico at the time of its formation. Pemex had total assets worth $101.8 billion in December 2019 and as of 2009 was Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue, surpassed only by Petrobras (the Brazilian national oil company). The company is the seventh most polluting in the world according to The Guardian.
Mexican oil expropriation
Petroleum industry in Mexico
Asphalt and pitch had been worked in Mexico since the time of the Aztecs. Small quantities of oil were first refined into kerosene around 1876 near Tampico. By the early 20th century, commercial quantities of oil were being extracted and refined by subsidiaries of the British Pearson and American Doheny companies and had attracted the attention of the Mexican government who then claimed all mineral rights for the state as part of its Constitution.
In 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) sided with oil workers striking against foreign-owned oil companies for an increase in pay and social services. On March 18, 1938, citing Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917, President Cárdenas embarked on the state-expropriation of all resources and facilities, nationalizing the United States and Anglo–Dutch operating companies. He is famous in saying in his speech addressing the nation,
I ask the entire nation to furnish the necessary moral and material support to face the consequences of a decision which we, of our own free will, would neither have sought nor desired.
Pemex was established by Cárdenas's decree of June 7, 1938.
He framed expropriation as a necessary national response to the injustice of the operations of foreign companies operating on Mexican soil. Expropriation was not outright confiscation since the Mexican government promised to compensate companies.
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Tampico is a city and port in the southeastern part of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. It is located on the north bank of the Pánuco River, about inland from the Gulf of Mexico, and directly north of the state of Veracruz. Tampico is the fifth-largest city in Tamaulipas, with a population of 314,418 in the city proper and 929,174 in the metropolitan area. During the period of Mexico's first oil boom in the early 20th century, the city was the "chief oil-exporting port of the Americas" and the second-busiest in the world, yielding great profits that were invested in the city's famous architecture, often compared to that of Venice and New Orleans.
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico covers 1,972,550 km2 (761,610 sq mi), making it the world's 13th-largest country by area; with a population of over 126 million, it is the 10th-most-populous country and has the most Spanish speakers.
The Gulf of Mexico (Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southwest and south by the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo; and on the southeast by Cuba. The Southern U.S.