Word: pemex
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mexico's high-riding oil workers got a jolt. When riggers and refinery men walked out last week, in one of their periodic 24-hour stoppages to force wage concessions, the new Alemán Government cracked right back. Troops were called out to guard property of Pemex, the Government's oil monopoly. Furthermore, deliveries went on: jeeploads of soldiers with machine guns at the ready convoyed gas trucks through the capital's streets...
...Secretary of Labor Andres Serra Rojas called the strike illegal, said he would have the law on its leaders. At week's end the new chief of Pemex, Antonio Bermúdez, went farther, fired 50 leaders of the lawbreaking union. Said he: "There are 20,000,000 men to take the places of 20.000. I have the Federal Government backing me and I was never more confident or optimistic in my life...
After eight years Mexicans were fed up with Pemex, the Government corporation that runs the oil industry. Even in the capital it was hard to get high-test gas, and when a man drove into the country he had to carry tins of the stuff or he might never get back. The gas he got often clogged feedlines, stalled...
...long statement on Mexico's oil problem last week, President-elect Miguel Aleman omitted such comments but hinted that mismanaged Pemex was due for drastic overhaul. It was gossiped that Pemex was losing $100,000 a day; it teemed with high-salaried, incompetent political lame ducks; it was constantly in trouble with labor. And in eight years it had failed to fit the oil industry into the domestic economy. It was still geared for export. Its pipelines ran down to the sea instead of to home markets in the big inland cities. A new refinery outside Mexico City would...
Probable first Alemán move: fire Pemex Director Efrain Buenrostro. After that, anything might happen, including the return, in some form, of foreign interests (TIME, Aug. 5). There might even be kerosene for Josefina's stove...