Word: pemex
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...promise by Ruiz Cortines to revoke the fare hikes and appoint a committee including rioting students "to consider all aspects of this complex problem." Even that failed to pacify the students. They sallied out, joined a leftist faction in a street battle for control of the labor union at Pemex, the national petroleum monopoly. The students helped attack Pemex headquarters, retreated when hard-pressed police fired...
Taking Over. What Pemex took over upon expropriation was no booming industry. From its 1921 peak of 193 million bbl., production had sagged badly as salt water seeped into the major fields and fear of expropriation caused the curtailment of new exploration. In 1938 only 38.5 million bbl. came out of the ground. The jubilation that greeted President Lazaro Cardenas' expropriation decree was hardly borne out by the prospects. Technicians fled. Outraged foreign companies organized a boycott against exported Mexican oil, persuaded equipment suppliers to refuse sales to Pemex. Soon Mexico was buying oil abroad...
...started in 1946 when business-minded Miguel Aleman became President of Mexico, named Antonio Bermudez, a wealthy whisky distiller, to head Pemex. Bermudez cracked down on graft and featherbedding, stepped up exploration. By 1951, production was twice that of 1938; last year the nation's wells produced 94.1 million bbl. Geologists and oil engineers, trained at the University of Mexico, directed a wildcatting program, using 146 drilling rigs, that brought in 18 new fields out of 84 tries...
Reforestation. As an arm of the government, Pemex sells many products at little more than cost in a conscious effort to speed the country's economic growth and help curb inflation. Price of high-octane Super Mexolina gasoline: 22½?a gallon. Taking a big loss, Pemex sells kerosene for 4? a gallon, specifically to save Mexico's forests from the charcoal makers, who otherwise would supply most cooking fuel. Both the nation's biggest business and biggest taxpayer, Pemex last year grossed $286 million, paid $35.6 million in federal taxes, still had $72 million to plow...
...Pemex is still inefficient, with 40,000 employees doing work that could be handled by 30,000. Graft and nepotism still creep in. Pemex must import $70 million worth of high-grade petroleum products yearly (but exports $45 million worth of crude oil plus some refined products). Its reinvestment rate is not high enough for any truly spectacular progress. But Bermudez does not propose to sacrifice Pemex welfare trappings in risky gambles on fast development. The success to date, he believes, plentifully fulfills Pemex' motto: "For the service of the nation...