Mexico’s love affair with Pemex: will its bid to save the fallen oil giant block the shift to clean energy?

Mexico was once a top-five oil producer but has dropped out of the top 10 in recent years. Pemex is now the world’s most indebted oil company. Illustration: Israel Vargas

The coastline of Tabasco, a waterlogged and oil-rich state on the Gulf of Mexico, is a tangle of mangroves and pipelines belonging to Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned hydrocarbons company. Its new $17bn (£13bn) Olmeca refinery at Dos Bocas, in President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s home state of Tabasco, symbolises his commitment to reviving Pemex and making the country energy self-sufficient – even if it means going all-in on oil.

But storms, floods and rising sea levels have put Mexico’s coastal life at risk. “With climate change, the floods are getting out of control,” says Lilia Gama, an ecology professor in Tabasco. “They last longer, spread further [and] accumulate in certain places. And this is no longer necessarily enriching the soil as it used to – it is causing the vegetation to rot.”